


the devil's in the details

by TheFirstDayOfSpring



Category: Taylor Swift (Musician), betty - Taylor Swift (Song), folklore - Taylor Swift (Album)
Genre: A shitload of angst, Childhood, F/F, High School, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, james is my baby and im proud, sad gay teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFirstDayOfSpring/pseuds/TheFirstDayOfSpring
Summary: A gay interpretation of the folklore teenage love triangle. In which James is a girl, obviously.
Relationships: Betty & James
Comments: 57
Kudos: 82





	1. just like a folk song

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warning for implied child abuse

On a breezy Monday morning in summer vacation, Jamie is left to her own devices. Her friends from school have left Wilson County for camp, her parents are back at work, and her brother is too old to play with Jamie these days, or so he says. He’s only a year older than her, but he has better things to do than to babysit her. So she sets off to the creek by herself. 

All set up with her pirate hat and her wooden sword buckled in the belt loop of her shorts, 

she trots down the street towards the creek. 

The tire swing and the treehouse her dad built for Jamie, her brother and their friends are hard to find if you don’t know of their existence, so Jamie is surprised to find another girl sitting on the bank of the creek on her way there. The girl is sat with her back towards Jamie, hugging her knees as she looks out over the softly cobbling water. She appears so lost in thought that she doesn’t even hear Jamie coming. Jamie stands still, afraid to jar the girl, and just watches her. Her long brown hair is twisted in beautiful braids, and she’s wearing a pretty summer dress. Jamie has dresses like that, buried in the back of her closet to avoid her mother suggesting she should wear them. She hates them, but on this girl it looks very nice.

Jamie doesn’t know how long she stands there for, watching the girl watching clouds pass on the water’s reflection. She wonders if she goes to school with her, if they know each other, but she doesn’t want to disturb her. 

She ducks with a squeal when a blackbird drops itself from its branch and caws as it passes right by her head. Her sword drops from her belt loop, and as she rushes to pick it up, she finds the girl already staring at her. 

“Hi,” Jamie stutters, quickly gathering her wits and standing straight with her chin up. 

The girl giggles softly and turns further around. 

It’s Betty from school. She’s in second grade too, going on third after the summer, same as Jamie. She’s smiling now, but Jamie can see that she’s been crying. The tears are still on her cheeks.

“Hi,” she says.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Betty says. “Are you?” 

An idea occurs to Jamie right then. She has never taken anybody to the clearing by the treehouse before except her brother, but Betty looks like she can use a swing on the tire swing today. There hasn’t been a day when swinging over the creek didn’t take all of Jamie’s sorrow away. “Do you want to come to the swing?” 

“What swing?”

Jamie beckons her to follow. She leads her to the clearing, where the grass is extra green, and the sun pushes its warm rays through the leaves above. The air smells like the honeysuckle on the waterfront, and birds chirp the songs of the summer from morning till night time. And there at the edge, Jamie points Betty to the tire swing.

Betty gets on it hesitantly. She needs Jamie to push her the first few times, but once she’s all set, she swings for what feels like hours. Her shrieks of joy echo over the creek as she reaches out to the leaves above. And when she finally comes down, she crashes down beside Jamie in the tall grass, still laughing. Jamie looks at her and grins.

“What’s with your hat?” Betty asks after a moment, squinting up at her.

“I’m a pirate,” Jamie said, pointing at the skull on the front of it. Wasn’t it obvious?

“Where’s your ship?”

“Up there.” Jamie nods to the treehouse, hidden behind the leaves. 

They climb up there, and sit on the cushions Jamie’s brother had taken from the old garden set to bring up there. Jamie lies down her sword atop the treasure chest in the corner and takes off her hat, and finally musters up the courage to ask Betty what she had been doing sitting by the waterside all by herself when Jamie stumbled upon her.

“I ran away from home,” Betty says. “Not forever. I just needed a quiet place.” Jamie nods slowly. Sometimes when everybody was home at the same time, she longed for the quiet of the woods too. But it still didn’t explain why Betty had been so sad. 

Betty must see her puzzled face, because she sighs, and after a moment begins to tell Jamie everything. Her dad had come home from a trip that morning, and her mom hadn’t wanted to let him inside. There had been lots of shouting, and eventually slamming of doors, and when Betty had come in to see her dad, he had pushed her aside and gone to the garage without another word.

“Where did he go?” Jamie asks, not knowing what else to say. “On his trip?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Betty shrugs. “He never says. He just leaves sometimes. For a couple of days, or weeks, and then he comes back. He always comes back.” Jamie thinks she sounds a little sad as she says the last part.

After a while, Jamie picks up her hat and jumps up from the creaking floor. She reaches her hand out to Betty to help her up. They stand up by the window of the treehouse, where Jamie’s dad had installed the wheel of her pirate ship last summer.

“We can go anywhere we want from here,” she tells Betty.

“Even the moon?” Betty asks.

“Even to Saturn.”

Over the summer, Jamie and Betty meet again and again on the clearing by the creek. Jamie hurries over there almost every morning to wait for her new friend, excited to spend another day with her. She brings the sweet tea that her mom makes in a flask, and they share it while they sit on a blanket in the shadow. They take turns on the swing and climb the ladder of the treehouse with ease. They talk about everything, from Captain Hook’s flying ship to their classmates, or they say nothing at all, just listen to the crickets sing and the water whistle down the stream. 

They imagine sailing to faraway places in their ship, away from Wilson County, Pennsylvania, to France and to India, never coming back home. Sometimes when Betty doesn’t want to play pirates, she’ll pretend to be a princess, princess Elizabeth of Neverland.

This is a game Jamie is less fond of.

“I don’t wanna be a princess,” she tells Betty one morning.

“You wanna be the queen?”

“No,” James grunts, slashing at the weeds with her wooden sword.

“Then you can be my prince.”

Jamie pauses her attack on the grass to consider this. “Okay.”

Betty crouches down to pick some of the daisies Jamie has ruined. She sits for a long time, tying them together, and then she gets up, holding it in her hands like a frail little bird.

“Kneel,” she says. Jamie kneels. “I hereby crown you Prince James of Neverland.”

Prince James bows her head to receive her crown. After this ceremony, they dance around the clearing together, James stumbling over her feet trying to keep up with Betty, but once she gets the hang of it, she has to admit it’s kind of fun.

It is during one of such dances, at the end of summer, that Jamie feels a sudden urge. It hits her suddenly, while Betty twirls under her arm and she catches her again. She stops dancing and holds Betty still against her. Her eyes grow wide with the realization of what she is about to do. She leans in slowly, and Betty doesn’t pull away when their lips touch.

Even after they let go, they stand blinking at each other in the heavy rays of the sun. Jamie isn’t sure this was part of the game, but neither of them says anything. 

They sit in the treehouse after, drinking Jamie’s sweet tea in silence.

“We can’t tell anyone,” Betty says after a while.

“Tell anyone what?” 

“That we kissed.” She frowns upon saying the last word, as if she can’t believe it herself.

The thought to tell anyone about the kiss hadn’t even occurred to Jamie yet. Whose business is it but theirs? Just like everything else that happens on the clearing, it’s their their little secret. Jamie wouldn’t even share it if she had anyone to tell.

“Cross my heart,” she says.

Both of them cross their hearts, and they shake hands in agreement. 

“If we don’t tell anyone,” Jamie begins hesitantly. She focuses her eyes on the grass stains on her shorts. “Does that mean we can do it again?”

“James!” Betty says, her mouth open in surprise.

Jamie blinks at her, and feels her breathing pick up. Maybe she had made a mistake. Maybe Betty had just been playing a part down there. 

But then Betty leans in close and gives her another kiss. Jamie grins to much to give her one back, but it’s good enough.

They lose track of time that afternoon in the treehouse. But Jamie doesn’t want the day to be over yet. She walks the extra blocks to Betty’s house, as they hold hands and skip over the cracks in the sidewalk. But when they get to Betty’s house, the door swings open, and a big bald man with a red face stomps off the porch.

“You’re late,” he snarls. “Where have you been all damn day?” His voice booms across the front yard.

Betty lets go of Jamie’s hand, and she doesn’t look back when her dad grabs her by the arm to take her inside. 

“Hey!” Jamie shouts. “Don’t hurt her!”

Betty and her dad both look over their shoulders before they reach the steps of the porch. Betty’s eyes are big and sad. She shakes her head just slightly enough for Jamie to see.

“Get off of my lawn,” the man shouted back. The door slams shut behind them. 

Jamie hears more shouting from behind it, but she stands in her place, unable to move. Until the shouts die down, and the street lights turn on, and Jamie knows she has to get home too. 

“Did you know we have a spare bedroom in our house?” Jamie says a week later. Betty’s dad hadn’t let her leave the house the whole week, but now that he’s away again, she finally gets to come to the clearing again, just in time before school starts again next week. “It’s full of toys and stuff Alex and I don’t use anymore, but if we take it all out, you can sleep there. Or you can just sleep in my room, if you want. I won’t mind. My mom makes the best pancakes. We can go to school together, and come here whenever we want. It’ll be great.” 

“James…” Betty sighs. She’s sitting on the swing with her head hung low, only swinging as far as the wind will take her.

“Yeah?” Jamie looks up from where she’s pacing the clearing, back and forth as she plots out her plan. 

“I can’t just come live with you,” she says. “You know that, right?”

“But why not? I live closer to school than you do. Your mom can visit whenever she wants.”

“I guess we can dream,” she says, so quietly that Jamie can barely hear it. But she does.

She turns her back to Betty, walks away towards the trees, and then she screams.

Birds fly up from their branches, skittering away in panic. Just one long wordless scream, and then she takes in the aftermath. The world answering her in silence, the sharp ache in her throat.

She flinches when she feels a touch on her waist, but then sinks into Betty’s arms.

“It’s not fair,” she says, her voice creaking. 

“I’m okay,” Betty whispers. 

Jamie turns around so she can hug her back. “We’ll go one day,” she says. “Far away. We can do what we want. No more secrets. Just you and me.” 

Betty nods. 

Jamie gets on her tiptoes, just high enough to reach Betty’s forehead with her lips. Betty squeezes her closer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment literally anything to win my everlasting love


	2. your own kind of blue

I think a lot about how it used to be. Before all of our mistakes, before everything I put you through, before we knew of anything life was going to throw at us. When you gave me a glimpse of how it should have been from the start, how it could have been had I been brave enough to give it back to you.

The first time you kissed me, I didn’t understand what had happened. Your confidence made it make sense in the moment, but the only thing I knew was that if anyone were to find out what we had done, it wouldn’t end well. God, I was seven years old. What could I have been so afraid of?

We didn’t kiss again until nine years later, and until then, we never talked about that day again. It was always there in the back of my mind, though, the memory of that kiss. Those kisses. I thought about them for all those years, wondering what they had meant, even though I knew. Of course I knew. But I couldn’t stop looking for an explanation that wasn’t as scary as the truth.

Looking back, it’s not as obvious that we remained so close throughout those years. We went to middle school and to high school, and we grew into the polar opposites we were always going to be. I was a cliche. You were less so, or maybe you were in your own way. I joined the cheer squad, became captain, I fell in with the popular crowd, I smiled my way through the football games and yearbook photos. You rode your skateboard to school and kept to yourself in class. You had your own friends, and you always sat on the bleachers at lunch, away from all the noise and the gossip of the cafeteria. It was like you were trying your best not to have anybody notice you. 

Well, I noticed you. 

And so did Alice, evidently. 

Later on, everybody certainly noticed you.

Ever since third grade began, I came over to your house at least twice a week. I was always welcome for dinner with your family, and some days it was just easier for my mother not to have to worry over me for a while. I could focus on my homework better at yours than at mine, ironically enough. I had other friends to turn to, but none of their houses felt as much as a home as yours did. Not even my own. 

It was just so easy to be around you, even easier than being alone. You knew me so well, that you felt more like an extension of me than just another person. 

I never hid our friendship from anyone. I don’t know if you realized that, in the end. I was never ashamed of you, James. It was never about you. I hope you knew that. I was proud to be your friend. There was no one I would rather have shared every part of my brain with.

It wasn’t just my house that was your sanctuary. It was you. Over the years, whenever I needed you, you were always there to listen to me, to distract me, and to make me laugh.

Then there was that time when my parents went through a particularly rough patch, at the start of junior year, and you took me to the rooftop of the treehouse, where we sat until the sun went down. We shared a bottle of beer in plastic cups. I usually didn’t like talking about them, but that night I told you everything about my parents, everything you knew and everything you didn’t. I cried, looking out over the creek, and you just sat with me in silence.

“Remember when we said we would just pack our things and leave this place together?” you said. I looked at you, looking for a trace of what you weren’t saying. 

“Big dreams,” I said.

“We will, you know?” You reached out for my hand, clasped around my knees. It was such an intimate gesture that it startled me. We didn’t touch much before that. Whenever I’d reach out to you to fix your hair or poke your stomach playfully you would flinch, and I took the hint that you didn’t like to be touched. But when you put your hand on mine, it felt right. It just made sense. It quieted down all the worries in my head, about my parents and my future.

As awakenings go, mine came a little late. The pieces didn’t fall into place for me until later that night, after I had gone home. Looking back, I can’t even remember why I went home at all. I didn’t stick around long. After lots of shouting and slamming doors, another fight with my dad escalating now that I’d learned to stand my ground with him, I drove back to your house well after midnight. Even then, I told myself I only went to you because you were always the one to cheer me up in these situations. I didn’t question myself, I just knew you would open the door for me at that hour and that you’d understand.

I used pebbles from your driveway to tap on your bedroom window, and there you were, opening your curtains like you had been expecting me.

“What’s wrong?” you asked when you came to the door. I shook my head. Without hesitation, you said, “I’ll drive.” 

You let the screen door fall back in place behind you, and wincing at the sound thinking of your sleeping family. You took my keys from my hand and I let you take me wherever you wanted. I knew you’d take me to the lookout off the highway, because it was your favorite place to be at night. We’d been there dozens of times before since you got your license.

We sat there on the hood of my car, playing one of my mom’s Tim McGraw cassettes on the radio as we looked out over the cliffside, the lake underneath us reflecting the moon and the lights of the city on the other side. You made quite a show of singing every word of  _ My Best Friend _ to me, deepening your voice to sound like a man and make me laugh. And when you were done performing, you jumped back on the hood and slipped your arm around me, and I rested my head on your chest.

I could feel your heart racing, and though I tried to put it on the fact that you’d just sang your guts out, I knew it wasn’t just that. I knew because my heartbeat picked up too, catching up to meet yours. And that was it. 

In hindsight, I knew a long time before that. Maybe as long as you did. But that was the moment I finally let it sink in. I’d loved you since that first summer, but I had pushed it out of my mind for so long that the idea came as new to me that night on the edge of the lookout. 

It started to rain right before you took me home, but you had secured the smile on my face with your light hearted jokes and newly gentle touch.

When we got back to your house, you lead me up the stairs quietly. I had been there a million times before, I could find my way through your hall in the dark, but it felt different that night. My heart hadn’t stopped racing since I’d sat down with you on the lookout, and by then I was so nervous that it felt more like I was getting sick. 

You lingered in the doorway long enough that I had to brush past you. I was about to walk further into the room, towards your bed where I had slept a million times before, when you took my wrist and pulled me close. So close that our noses touched. Still, neither of us moved for a long time, not until you took your hand off my wrist and moved it to my waist. And then I couldn’t walk away even if I’d actually tried.

I put my hand on your neck and pulled you in for the kiss you were asking for. 

And that one was anything but chaste. It seemed to last longer than the night itself, as we took it to your bed and tucked it under the sheets. We kissed all night, our mouths and our hands making up for all the words we had omitted from our private vocabulary for so long, out of fear or shame, but that night it didn’t matter.

We fell asleep at dawn, tangled into one another until your mother awoke us at noon. And even then, we had a hard time leaving the bed.

Everything changed after that. At first, the world looked much brighter than before, as bright as it had that summer by the creek. I finally allowed my heart to open up for you, and you settled in there so comfortably that I immediately knew you weren’t leaving it any time soon. In those first weeks we rebuilt our kingdom in your room, the covers of your bed serving as a fortress. We didn’t talk much except with our hands and lips, and we only left the room for meals with your family, who must have known something was going on but were considerate enough not to comment on it. 

Going home on Sunday evenings was the worst part of my week. No longer because of my parents, but because it was just unbearable to be away from you. Even though I would see you in school again the next day, I missed you any time we weren’t alone together. I had never felt loneliness until shown me the opposite. I thanked God for those afternoons with no cheer practice, although some days you would wait for me anyway, and we’d go back to your house together. We’d lie on in our fort doing homework like we had all those years, except now sprawled over each other, always with some part of us touching. You’d doodle stars and flowers on me, so distracted from your work with my body so near you that you had to divert your attention to it. 

But it couldn’t go on that way forever. We weren’t exactly subtle. Your parents were starting to ask you questions after I’d gone home, and mine were concerned with my whereabouts at any given moment, never believing I would spend that much time with just a friend. They thought you were a coverup for some boy I was seeing. 

My friends were starting to complain too, bored with the fact that I never seemed to want to hang out anymore. I never told them it was because of you. But in them, I found an excuse to take a step back from you, which the world around us deemed necessary. There were always parties and hangouts to attend, and though I always asked, you were never interested in coming with me. 

I think around that time, you were disappointed in me. You never did like my friends much, and looking back I know why. But back then, I was hoping that you might get to know them better, and they you, and that each party would find what I liked so much about the other. Still, I couldn’t blame you for not being interested in them. They weren’t interested in you either. They would make fun of your friends, the skaters with their jet black hair and oversized clothes. They left you out of it because of your association with me, but it felt the same. Though I’m sure your friends weren’t exactly fans of mine either. 

For fear of your parents dropping in to check on us, we stopped making out in your room, too. We’d go to the treehouse, or the matinee on the days they played old movies that no one ever went to see. Or we’d go for drives, to the lookout, to the the creek, or nowhere at all, and just pull over somewhere beside the road. As much as we felt like a divergence to the norm of our town, we participated in the same cliche as all the straight couples we knew, drinking cheap liquor and kissing in cars, either your mom’s or mine, always with some old cassette playing in the background. The Tim McGraw one with  _ My Best Friend  _ on it was our favorite for obvious reasons. Afterwards we would sit back and fantasize about how we would drive away from there one day, all the way to New York, and start a life there. There would be more people like us there, who would welcome us with open arms, and we could hold hands and kiss in the streets we’d recognize from movies. It was going to be perfect, and for the most part, clinging on to that idea is what kept me going, what kept us going, throughout all of Junior year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments feed my soul uwu


	3. 'til we run out of road

James scrapes her throat and fidgets with the buttons of her shirt, looking at herself in the rearview mirror. She doesn’t know why she’s nervous. It’s just Betty. She saw her just yesterday at the homecoming game, though from a distance. Maybe it’s just the house itself. James doesn’t like coming to Betty’s house, because Betty doesn’t like it much either. She glances at it through the window, and startles when she sees a figure behind the living room window. It’s Betty’s dad, probably wondering why James has been sitting there in her car for the better part of the last five minutes. 

James swallows and finally gets out of the car. She skips up the steps of the porch nervously. Maybe she shouldn’t have insisted on picking Betty up for their date. But for just this once, she had wanted to overdo it, and she had sensed that Betty liked the idea of going out together like normal teenagers do. Just once, to celebrate Thanksgiving together. James is hoping that if tonight is a success, she can try her luck again come Christmastime.

She rings the doorbell and waits patiently, hands on her back. She stands her ground bravely when Betty’s dad opens up the door.

“Good evening, sir,” she says.

“Betty!” he bellows towards the vague direction of the staircase, never taking his eyes off of James’s awkward stature, taking in her neat button down and brand new Levi’s. “Your friend is here.”

Betty appears at the top of the staircase like an angel, literally, in her white dress that despite its middle length sleeves looked slightly too cold for the time of the year. She carries a beige cardigan over her shoulder that she puts on as she jumps off the last step.

“You two look awfully dressed up,” her dad notes.

“It’s a fancy occasion,” Betty says. James tries to catch her eye, but she doesn’t give. “Goodnight, Daddy.” She kisses him in the cheek hastily and then skips past him out the door. 

“Back by eleven, young lady.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbles back at him as she hurries to the car. 

James quickly retracts her plan to hold open the car door for her. Instead, she just gets in the driver’s seat, and Betty is all seated and ready to go.

“What did you tell him?” James asks, aware that his eyes are still on them.

“We’re having dinner with some of the boys on the team to celebrate last night’s win.” 

“Didn’t you celebrate last night’s win... last night?”

“Does it matter? Just drive.”

James obeys, and takes the car on the road. The radio starts to blast Paul Simon again, and she doesn’t bother turning it off. There’s not much to say anyway, when Betty snarls at her like that. James just has to give her a second to realize that it’s not her she’s mad at.

Betty turns the volume down as soon as they hit main street.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I just wanted to go. I did celebrate yesterday, but you know how he likes football. I knew he wouldn’t care if I went with the boys another night. They’re the best alibi.” 

James nods, and reassures her with a smile. “So where do I come in in this fictional night of celebration?”

“It’s a quadruple date,” she explains. “Inez and Britney will be there too.”

“So I’m dating a football player in this scenario?”

“In my dad’s version of it,” she says. “But in this one, you’re dating me.” She leans out of her seat, pulling against the belt to plant a kiss on James’s cheek. 

“I like this one better,” James grins. She lets one hand off the steering wheel and holds it out until Betty takes it gratefully, holding it in her lap with both of her hands.

“You look pretty, by the way.”

“So do you,” Betty says, with a squeeze to James’s hand.

They drive like that, off the town road and onto the highway in silence, both smiling at the windshield.

“Where are you taking me, anyway?” Betty inquires when they’re way passed halfway there.

“It’s a surprise.”

James drives down around the lake and into the city. She parks a couple of blocks away from the restaurant her parents used to take her and her brother for their birthdays when they were younger. They leave their jackets in the car and walk there arm in arm, as they figure friends might, but feeling giddy regardless. They’ve never been on a real date before, and even if they can’t go all out, it still feels very official. 

The waiter leads them to the table James reserved earlier in the week. Betty looks anxiously around the room, undoubtedly checking it for familiar faces. Their table is a small one, stuffed between the back wall and a huge plant, hidden from view from most angles. James smiles when they get there, and when the waiter leaves, she jumps in to pull back Betty’s chair. 

Betty is beaming shyly as she takes her seat. James sits proudly across from her and makes a show of unfolding her cotton napkin and tucking it into her collar. Betty laughs and shakes her head at her.

After the waiter comes back with their sodas, James pulls the napkin out of her collar in all seriousness.

“I got you something,” she says, her hand grazing over the square bulge in the pocket of her jeans.

“What? Why?” Betty says, but her face lights up with excitement.

“Because…” James pauses, fiddling with the box in her hand. “I wanted to.”

She puts the box on the table and slides it towards Betty.

“Is this a proposal?” Betty jokes.

“Just open it,” James says.

As Betty takes it from her, their fingers glide together, and it sends a shiver down James’s spine. Betty opens the box, and her smile fades for a second, before it comes back bigger than before.

“James…”

She takes the necklace off of its cushion, and holds it up in the air. The star on it shimmers in the dim light of the restaurant.

“Because you shined brighter than the real ones last night,” James says. “And every night before that, actually. I got it weeks ago.”

Betty says nothing, and the smile falls off her face again. Then she gets up from the table, pulls James up from her chair and clasps her arms around her. James almost stumbles back in surprise, but she holds her ground. “Thank you,” Betty whispers.

Betty holds her hair to the side while James puts the necklace on her. It looks great with her dress and her hair over one shoulder, and James is proud to see it there.

After dinner, which James insists on paying for, they walk back to the car. And when they’re sure that nobody is watching, James presses Betty against the car and kisses her before she opens up the door for her. Betty giggles and gets in.

“So… was this it?” Betty asks when they pull up in front of James’s house. It’s nowhere near eleven yet, but James would at least have the decency to take her back home.

“The rest of our evening plans don’t require a car,” James says. “In fact, some would advise strongly against the use of a car, for what we’re about to do.” 

So they get out of the car and cross the street to the side with no lights, so that at the end of the street, James gathers the courage to take Betty’s hand. She flinches, but after a quick glance over her shoulder, relaxes into it. 

James doesn’t even need to tell Betty where they’re going. She knows they’re on their way to the treehouse as if by instinct, and veers into the shrubs before James even tells her to. 

James helps Betty up the ladder without ripping her dress. Once there, she turns on the fairy lights and takes a bottle of peach schnapps from the treasure chest, along with two champagne glasses. She’d stolen them cautiously from her mom’s crystal cabinet in preparations for this night.

“To celebrate the success of our first date,” James says. She opens the bottle ceremoniously, throws the twist cap against the roof wildly, as if it’s a shooting cork. The gesture pulls a laugh from Betty’s throat, and her whole face lights up. It makes James want to abandon the bottle altogether and climb on her lap and kiss her until they both see stars. She makes a mental note to do exactly that later, and finishes pouring the glasses.

They clink them together as James sits back down, their backs against the wall, fingers tangled together. 

“It feels crazy that this was only our first date,” Betty says after a moment of peaceful silence.

“Oh, I was talking about the one nine years ago,” James says. She’s joking, but only half.

“Back where it all began,” Betty says, gently grazing her thumb over James’s. It makes her heart flip in its place, so she can’t speak for a moment.

“You can’t call that a failure,” she grins, right after she recovers.

“I would never,” Betty whispers. 

They share a peachy kiss, and then James pulls back, looking up at the fairy lights around them.

“I’ve been thinking,” she begins, holding on to Betty’s hand a little tighter.

“Didn’t I tell you to stop that,” Betty sighs jokingly.

“I think I wanna come out,” James says, swallowing away her nerves. “Like, soon-ish.”

“Really?” Betty’s grip on her hand loosens a little bit. James takes a big gulp from her glass, hoping she didn’t bring this up too soon. Maybe she did. After all, they only just had their first official date.

“Yeah. Just to my parents and Alex, I mean.” 

Betty nods slowly. 

“They’ll know about us, though.” 

“I think they kind of already do,” James argued gently. She can hear Betty’s breath speeding up.

“How?”

“I’m not like you, Betty. I’ve never been this girly… girl. I’ve never fit in. But I have always known that I liked girls. And I feel like everyone can see that, from the way that I walk and talk and dress. It’s like they can smell it on me. My parents have been asking me questions for years. They just know. I don’t know, I just don’t want to pretend anymore. It’s exhausting. I don’t want to feel ashamed. ‘Cause I’m not. I’m really proud to love you.”

Betty looks at James for a long time. Her eyes are wide and filling up with something bigger than tears.

“You love me,” she says after a moment.

James’s jaw drops. She hadn’t even realized she’d said it. She almost panics, almost tries to retract her statement. But she won’t. It’s the truth. Betty knew that. She must have.

“I always have,” James says with a shrug, like she’s admitting to liking pizza.

“Oh God,” Betty says. James is afraid to look at her. She clenches her jaw, trying to prepare for whatever Betty is about to say, but the longer it takes, the more she starts to doubt she can handle it. “I can’t, James.”

“Oh,” she tries to say, but not much more than a sigh comes out. She sits up, so Betty can’t see her face.

“No, James,” Betty reaches for her arm and pulls her back. “I mean, I can’t come out. I want this. I want you. I really do. But I can’t come out. That’s all.”

“You don’t have to,” James says. She turns around to look her in the eye. “We can do this in secret, as long as you need to. But would it be so bad if my parents knew? We could just go to my house again instead of sneaking around all the time.”

“What if they don’t like it? What if they don’t like me after they find out?”

“Are you kidding me? They love you.” 

“I don’t want them to know,” she says. “Not about me. I can’t have people know. My dad will kill me. My friends… they would never look at me again. I can’t do it, James. Please don’t tell anyone.” Her voice shakes, and tears are threatening to spill down her cheeks. That’s the last thing James wants to see.

“That’s okay,” she says softly, stroking those beautiful cheeks. “I won’t tell.”

“Just you and me,” Betty croaks.

“Against the world.” 

James captures her face and kisses her deeply. It’s not long before their breath quickens in sync, and James clumsily tips over her glass as she climbs over Betty’s legs to straddle her. They don’t pause to check the damage. They don’t pause for anything, not even when the rain starts to pour down on the leaky roof of the treehouses, not even when the clock strikes eleven on Betty’s flip phone in her purse. They can’t even stand to tear their lips apart as they rid each other of their clothes, hungrily taking in every inch of each other with their fingertips. The night is too cold and too wet for bare skin, but they don’t even feel it. It happens unplanned, that first time, but they know each other well enough to know that it’s right. 

And when it’s over, James rests her lips against Betty’s neck, grinning like an idiot. Betty strokes her hair back and holds her tightly in place.

“I love you too,” Betty whispers after a while. She’s barely audible over the rain crashing down on them, but James hears it. She kisses Betty’s neck in response, smiling bigger than ever.

They lie there a while longer, and James almost dozes off on Betty’s chest. Until Betty starts to swear and sits up, reaching for her purse as James slides to the floor. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she curses, fumbling with her phone. “It’s past midnight. Fuck! My dad is gonna kill me.”

“Oh, fuck,” James says, feeling the moment pulled out from under them violently. They get back in their clothes quicker than they got out of them and clumsily get down the ladder. The rain hits down on them as thunder rumbles above.

“Betty, wait,” James yells over the roar of it. Betty is leaping through the shrubs and back to the street with the speed of a fox, and James can hardly keep up. “I’m walking you home.”

Betty looks at her from behind a shield of raindrops.

“You don’t have to,” she says. “It’s pouring.”

“I want to.” James takes the coat that she had slung over her shoulder on the way down and puts it around Betty’s shoulders. She sighs at the gesture, obviously not wanting James to soak, but at the same time appreciating the coat too much to say anything. She shrugs it on with a shy little smile, and then turns to speed walk towards her street.

James is still struggling to keep up with her, her legs aren’t as long and athletic as Betty’s. She never speeds by foot. That’s what her skateboard is for. Eventually she falls into a step that is more of a dance than anything. She uses the momentum to swing around the streetlights, and the longer it goes on, the more theatric flare she adds to it. Eventually, she is sashaying from one side of the street to the other, making the most of the privacy of a calm and stormy night in the suburbs.

“James,” Betty laughs, hugging the coat a little tighter around herself. James skips back to her and untangles her hands from the sleeves. She drags Betty along in her crazy little dance. Betty squeals with clumsy fear and joy as James spins her around in the middle of the street, the schnapps in their blood challenging their balance. Eventually Betty finds her footing and matches James’s enthusiasm, until they both run out of breath and just hold each other close, swaying slowly from side to side. James feels it sinks in on them both at the same time, the weight of what they just did together. Not the dance, but before that,in the treehouse. The air and the rain is suddenly heavy with it, as they pull each other close. 

And then they’re kissing in the rain like they’re in some dramatic movie. They kiss until not just their breaths are shaking, but also James’s whole body.

“You’re so cold,” Betty says.

“I think ‘cool’ is the word you’re looking for.”

“No, it’s definitely not,” she laughs. She grabs James’s hand and pulls her along the road, a bit more her tempo this time. They turn into Betty’s street, swinging their hands in between them, but Betty let’s go when they near her house.

“The light’s still on…” 

“Maybe they just left it on for you,” James tries, but she can feel Betty’s nerves creeping up on herself too. She walks with her until they’ve reached the front yard. 

“Thank you for tonight,” Betty says. “For everything.”

“Anytime.” 

Betty smiles and starts to take off James’s coat. That’s when the front porch light turns on and the door swings open.

“Get inside,” her dad’s voice bellows. Betty freezes. “Now!” 

He stomps down the steps of the porch, and he gets to Betty before James knows what to say. He takes her by the collar of James’s coat and starts to drag her inside.

“Sir, it was my fault,” James says. She stumbles onto the front lawn to follow them. “I lost track of time. It won’t happen again.”

“You,” he says, as he lets go of Betty. She turns around on the porch steps.

“Daddy, please.”

“If I see you near my daughter again, you’re in big trouble, kid.”

“Dad,” Betty pleads.

“Inside!” 

The door closes behind them with a bang and a shudder up James’s spine. She stands there looking at the house, but she can’t hear anything over the nose of the rain and the thunder. She’s shivering and cold, and she’s scared to stay there. 

She walks home, drenched and shaking, trying not to cry. When she passes by her mom’s car to take her phone out of the dashboard, she notices Betty’s cardigan on the passenger’s seat. She picks it up and runs to her front door.

“You’re back late,” her dad says from the couch when she gets in. “Did you girls have fun?”

“Uh huh,” James says. She bites her cheek, to stop herself from either talking or crying. She isn’t sure which would happen first. She tells her dad she’s tired and wishes him a good night. He tells her to take a warm shower first. James smiles grimly at him before she treads up the stairs.

When she gets out of the shower, somewhat warmer than before, she picks up Betty’s cardigan. She presses her nose into the wool, taking in Betty’s sweet smell, and her heart almost bursts with all the love that fills it. She puts the cardigan on and gets under the covers. Then she checks her phone.

One message from Betty.

_ im fine. did you get home safe? x _

James sighs.

_ yes. i love you _

She deletes the last part. Then types it again. Then replaces it with 

_ good night x _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spare comments ma'am


	4. kiss it better

Our first date was perfect. You showed me everything we could be once we got out of that godforsaken town. You were gonna make me the happiest woman on earth one day, I knew it. And then we got to my house. 

My dad never liked you. He never explicitly told me why. But you told me that night that it was like people could smell it on you, that you were different, and maybe that’s what it was. From the moment he saw that little kid in his front yard, armed with a wooden sword and a pirate hat, your bruised and scraped knees and dirty clothes, he had made up his mind about you. He didn’t like me being around you so much of my time, like he thought it might rub off on me. And I guess in a way it did.

He grounded me for two months. I didn’t get to see you outside of school at all. And even though we texted, I never knew what it was like to really miss someone until those two excruciating months. 

We started writing each other letters, and passing them in each others’ lockers. Every time I found a new one, it made me blush so bad that I couldn’t even hide it from my friends. I didn’t have to do much to mislead them. They would come up with any boy all by themselves to project my affection on, and I would just have to grin knowingly to make them believe I had a crush on him. Then I would bury your letters at the bottom of my bag where they would safely sit until I got home, where I read them five times over before I hid them in a box stashed in the far corner under my bed. As much as it stressed me out to keep so big a secret, it excited me that that secret was you. Whenever I saw you at school, every nerve in my body lit up, sending a surge of energy through me that gravitated all my thoughts back to you. Having you glance back at me with your most charming little smirk during homeroom or graze your hand against mine when we passed each other in the halls was the highlight of my day.

That Christmas was the worst of my life. My parents had been fighting an abnormal amount, even for them. My father’s infidelities were finally becoming too much for my mother, and everything was going to explode sooner rather than later. And my grandparents were spending the week in Florida, so it was gonna be just the three of us, no one around to make them hold back. 

After a family dinner gone wrong, my father left the house with a slamming door and ran off to his mistress once again. My mother and I were still miserable after. I tried to console her, but she was so angry that nothing I could say or do caught her attention. Eventually she went to bed, and I went to my room too to sit with my thoughts and cry. 

I was still awake when you texted me to look out your window at midnight. And there you were, in your ugliest Christmas sweater and your new coat, standing out in the garden in the snow. I still had your old one in my closet, holding onto it to wrap around myself whenever I was missing your hugs.

“What are you doing here?” I had hissed down from the window.

“Wishing you a merry Christmas,” you said. It was probably me texting you that my father had run off that prompted you to show up unannounced like this, or you would never have done it. I bet you thought you would just climb your way up to my window, like some kind of superhero, but when you discovered there was no way to climb up a bare wall, you had to rely on me to come down and open the door for you.

In all that time we had been friends, you had only been in my house twice before. I was sure it hadn’t changed much since, but you kept looking around at everything, taking it all in like there was something to learn from it. We snuck quietly up to my room, careful not to wake my mom. 

As soon as you closed the door behind you, I broke down crying again. I cursed myself for doing it, because I was so happy that you were there, so close to me, just the two of us, alone. But my eyes were still overflowing with tears from before, and I never could hold back around you.

You didn’t miss a beat. You put your arms around my waist and let me sob into your shoulder. We stood there like that until I managed to calm down, not saying a word. And then you slipped your cold hands under my sweatshirt making me squeal with shock and pull my face out of your neck. I scoffed at your little smile as you drew figures on my back with your icy fingers, and leapt up to kiss me softly.

It wasn’t the kind of hungry kiss that I had imagined would make up for all that time without it, but maybe it was more perfect that way. You were so gentle with me that it made me wonder what I had done to deserve it. Still, I held you close by the back of your neck to make it last. You stayed, and that whole night I clutched your arm around me like a safety blanket. I hadn’t slept that well since I was little. 

The next morning, you weren’t there. There was no proof you had even been there, except for the dried up snow slush footsteps of your boots, and a note on the pillow. You had to return home before your parents found out you weren’t home. That made me grin. You were so not the type to disobey your parents, but you had done it just to see me and collect your Christmas kiss. 

I spent the rest of the holidays with you. As long as my dad was still away and my friends still believed me to be grounded, we had all the time in the world to catch up on the time we’d lost. 

Even in the new year, my dad didn’t come back for a long time. By March, it was my mom who suggested I could throw a big birthday party for once, and she even left town for a night to let me have at it like a real teenage movie cliche. Of course I invited all of my friends, all the jocks and the cheerleaders, the usual party crowd. But it was important to me that you were there too. You helped me with the preparations. We spent the whole day trying to turn my house into something less like a prison of gloom, and more like a Sweet Sixteen party scene. It took a lot of garlands and disco lights, but by the time my friends showed up, it looked quite worthy. None of them had ever been to my house before anyway.

My cheer friends didn’t mind you being there. I know you thought that. I could tell they made you uncomfortable, in their mini dresses and their makeup, talking about boys with me like they always did. You stood there in your t-shirt and jeans, hair tied back as usual, and hardly said a word to them. I knew it wasn’t because you couldn’t be bothered to make an effort. You just had no idea what to say. And in your defense, they didn’t try very hard to include you either. 

When the boys started to show up, there was a bit more interest in you.One of them asked me outright what you were doing there, when you were standing right next to me.

“She’s my friend. You know that.” I was afraid to look at your face after saying that, afraid of what I would see on it and of how I would look to them. I was relieved when your friend Sam showed up with her friend, also Sam, who had brought along some party favors that made the boys forget about everything else. I don’t think you even knew you were friends with the local weed dealer until that night, but it was a pleasant surprise on their part.

I knew Sam was one of your closest friends, but you never told me that she was like us. She and the other Sam, there was something between them, and although they weren’t exactly obvious about it, they didn’t seem to be very deep in the closet either. Not like us. Or like me, at least. 

After a couple of drinks, when people were starting to dance and make out and care less about what everyone else was doing, I took you out to the garden and asked if you knew.

You and Sam had never talked about it, but you weren’t surprised. You didn’t know other Sam that well, but it made sense. 

Realizing that we weren’t the only ones in town gave me hope and made me more nervous at the same time. If we had clocked them so easily, they must have known about us too. But you trusted that even if Sam did suspect me being gay, she still wouldn’t tell anyone. And other Sam barely talked to anyone anyway. She hardly ever went to school at all. You assured me this wouldn’t change anything.

And in all fairness, they didn’t talk. But something did shift that night. Sam and Sam didn’t stay long, only as long as other Sam’s weed supply lasted among the boys and the girls willing to try it. After they were gone, the a large chunk of my guests sat in a circle on the kitchen floor, talking about them. And it turned out they had seen the same thing I had. 

That was the first time I ever heard anyone use the word ‘dykes’ in real life. And it came out of my friend Britney’s mouth. I choked up. I couldn’t have said anything if I tried.

You didn’t seem to have that problem. “So what if they are?” you said. “It’s none of your business.”

“I wish it were my business,” said one of the boys. Probably Justin. “Those two are hot.”

“Same,” another one said. “I wouldn’t mind getting caught in the middle of that.”

“Ew,” agreed most of the girls in unison.

“You guys didn’t even know their names before tonight,” you said. You were grinding your teeth from where you stood at the counter, holding your cup so tight I could already see it tear and spill over the floor.

“I know Sam.”

“Yeah, we know Sam.” 

“Which one?”

“The tall one.” 

“Pot girl.”

“Well, still,” you said. “Don’t talk about them like that.”

“What’s it to you?” I think it was Stephen, who asked you that. In that moment, I couldn’t have hated him more. They were putting you on the spot. You looked at me for support, and I just said nothing.

“They’re my friends,” you said. I felt like your look was accusing me.

“So are you a dyke too?” Justin asked.

“Guys, come on,” I said, my heart racing in my throat. 

“Yeah, that’s really mean,” Inez said, not quite getting the message. But it worked. They changed the subject after that. I couldn’t say anything for a long time. And I couldn’t look at you. You left the kitchen at some point, and I didn’t follow you. I know how shitty that was of me, I even knew it then. But I couldn’t bear the thought of them talking about me like that. I was hoping you would understand that, when really I should have cared a bit less about what they would think. I should have followed you, I should have shown you that you were worth more to me than any of them. I can’t make excuses for that now.

Even after everybody left, we didn’t talk about it. There was a tension between us I’d never felt before, and it scared me. For the first time since we had started our romantic relationship, you weren’t making any attempts to make me smile. You barely even looked at me before we went to bed without much more than a peck on the lips. You still held me as we slept, but I felt a distance that had never been there before, even when we were actually apart. 

“I love you,” I whispered, hoping you weren’t asleep yet, hoping that it meant anything to you in that moment. I couldn’t bear the silence that followed.

“I love you too,” you said eventually, and you squeezed me a little closer.

I did, you know? I loved you so fucking much. I think about that so many times. How no one has ever made me feel the way you did when we were young, and no one ever will. How sure I am that even the people that have really known true love, still didn’t know it like we did. I curse myself every night for not realizing how special that was. You were so good to me, James. I took every bit of it for granted. 

Back then, the things I said after Britney saw us together made all the sense in the world to me. Now, I can’t think of any way to justify a single word of it. You never deserved the hell I put you through that spring. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am once again begging for comments
> 
> Also bonus points for who guesses the guest stars' identities


	5. as the water rushes in

_ Treehouse after school. It’s an emergency. _

James receives the message in third period, and it haunts her for the rest of the day. When she sees Betty in the hall, she can’t catch her eye, and she doesn’t want to resort to yelling her name or pulling her aside to ask what is wrong. She nervously sits through lunch in the soft spring sun on the bleachers, tapping her foot to make the whole stand shake. Sam and Alice ask her if she’s okay multiple times, and give each other skeptical glances when James says she’s fine.

She isn’t sure if she should wait for Betty or go to the tree house first thing after her last period ends. The text didn’t mention a time. It didn’t mention an ‘ _ x’  _ or an  _ ‘I love you’  _ either, which has James’s heart dropping an inch every time she thinks about it. She decides to drop by the football field to see if Betty is at cheer practice. She sees the other cheerleaders standing around aimlessly, but upon closer look, she realizes Betty isn’t there with them. Come to think of it, she hasn’t seen her around since before lunch.

James is out of breath before she gets on her skateboard, and pushes as fast as she can to get to the treehouse. Once she gets to the creek, she kicks up her board and runs through the shrubbery and onto the clearing.

“Betty?” she shouts. There’s no response.

She hurries up the treehouse ladder, and there she finds Betty sitting against the wall, hugging her knees. She looks up at James with big, teary eyes.

“What happened?” James asks. She scoots across the floor and folds an arm around Betty’s shoulders. 

“It’s over, James,” she says.

James’s heart drops the final inch, out of her body. Her arm around Betty slacks to the floor limply, and she feels her head go heavy. Along with the exhaustion from her race here, she feels like she might throw up. She doesn’t resurrect in time to say a word before Betty continues.

“Britney saw us at the matinee last night. She told me this morning, and I denied everything, but I don’t know if she’s gonna let it go.” 

“What did she see?” James asked carefully, still unable to move.

“She saw us kissing, James! What else would she have seen? That’s just about all we do there.”

The noise in James’s head is so loud that she can barely hear herself ask, “Was she sure?”

“She wasn’t at first, but then she looked around again. God, she couldn’t even believe it, that’s why she asked me about it. I told her we were just whispering and she was insane for thinking otherwise. I still don’t think she bought it.” Betty throws back her head and lets out a sob. “Fuck, she’s probably telling the entire squad right now, if she hasn’t already. We’re so fucked.”

“She wouldn’t do that, right?” James says, not really having the focus to think her words through. “Who would believe her?”

“They all would! I’ve never had a boyfriend, do you know how weird they think that is? They know how much time I spend with you and they already think you’re gay. They’ve probably been thinking about it for a while.”

James swallows, remembering the conversation at Betty’s party.

“No one would be surprised. Britney is gonna tell the girls and then the girls are gonna talk like they always do. The whole school will know. And then… oh my God.” She slaps her hands in front of her face, grabbing her hair by the roots. “Everyone’s gonna know! The whole fucking town! How could we be so stupid?”

“We weren’t stupid,” James tries. “How many times have we been to the matinee? Nobody has ever seen us. It was just dumb luck.”

“It was gonna happen at some point. We were careless.”

James grits her teeth. They have been anything but careless. They have been doing the most to make this work, to stay hidden and keep their love a secret, when James was ready to shout it from the rooftops. It was hard, and it was risky, but if it was gonna happen at some point, it wasn’t because they were careless.

“Betty… It’s gonna be okay. Even if the whole town knows, what then? Your dad isn’t around to kick you out anymore. And even if he was… you would be okay. I promise.”

“How can you say that?” Betty gets onto her feet and starts pacing the small floor, the wood creaking with her weight. “I will lose everything, James! All my friends will ditch me if they believe it. They’re gonna get me kicked off the squad. I can kiss any chance of a scholarship goodbye without cheer. I’ll be stuck in this town forever with no friends. And even if my dad doesn’t catch wind of this and comes back to handle it, my mom still wouldn’t be thrilled to have a gay kid. Either way she will be pissed if she finds out from someone else. If she doesn’t kick me out she will never look at me again. I can’t risk all of that, James! I’ll have nothing left!”

“But you’ll have me!” James shouts back, her voice breaking. “Do you get that? Do you think this is gonna be fun for me? Do you think I want you to drop everything for me? I don’t! But I can’t change any of this, Betty. All I can do is stick around and hold you through it all. No one can take that away from you, as long as you don’t let them.” 

She’s pleading on her knees, reaching out for Betty’s hand. And Betty sinks down to the floor, falls into her arms.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She holds Betty tighter than ever, squeezes her so hard that she thinks it might hurt, but she doesn’t even care. She pulls Betty’s head into her shoulder and holds her as she sobs with her hands clasped to James’s shirt, no intention of letting go either. “We’ll figure it out.”

“You and me,” Betty whispers.

“You and me.”

James makes a decision that same night. She’s already emotional anyway, and her parents will ask her what’s wrong when they see her face at dinner. If what Betty thinks might happen is true, she has to be the first to tell them. And she has been ready for a while now.

She can barely get a single pea down her throat the whole dinner, but she waits. She waits for the right moment. Even when her dad asks her if she’s feeling okay, she looks a little pale, she shrugs it off. But then before Alex can start to clear the table, she just blurts it out.

A simple “I’m gay,” and the weight of the world topples on James shoulders. She doesn’t look up from her half empty plate, and for the moment nobody says anything, she’s scared they might not have heard her. Or worse.

“Oh,” Alex says, breaking the silence.

“Alright,” her dad says.

“That’s okay,” her mom says.

“Is that why you looked like you were about to throw up?” her dad asks.

James laughs, nods, and then starts to cry. She sobs over her plate as the tension leaves her body. 

“Oh baby.” Her mom’s chair scrapes back, and within a second, her arms are slung around James’s shoulders, accompanied by a hard kiss on the top of her head. “What did you think we were gonna say?”

James shrugs. There was always the fear of it going drastically wrong, but deep down she has always known it was going to be like this. Her parents had prepared her as well for this as she had them. It was never even that much of a secret.

Her dad joins in on the bear hug and James laughs through her stupid tears.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Alex asks. 

That makes her upset again. She doesn’t even know how to answer that. She just shrugs again.

“Is it complicated?” her mom suggests.

James nods. Her mom rubs her thumbs over James’s shoulders to console her. She leans into her parents arms and lets them comfort her.

“Well, if anybody gives you shit, you have to tell me, yeah?” Alex moves along. “I will beat them up.” 

“Not with those noodle arms,” James says, and everybody laughs, except Alex.

“Watch me,” he pleads.

When the moment is over, her mom decides they’ve deserved celebratory ice cream. They eat it in silence, though her mom doesn’t lift her hand off James’s wrist for the entire duration of dessert. James looks around at the three of them, enjoying their ice cream like nothing has changed. And nothing has, for them. That’s what makes her tear up again.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

“Kid,” her dad says, resting his hand on James’s shoulder. “Don’t thank us for doing what we’re meant to do.”

James thinks about Betty’s dad, who isn’t even around to be mad at Betty anymore. She thinks about other Sam, who spent a month living in her car after her stepdad kicked her out and now lives with Sam whenever he’s at her mom’s house. She thinks about all the movies and shows she has seen, the stories she has read of all the worst case scenarios that had been playing in her mind ever since she realized the way she felt about girls wasn’t normal.

“Still,” she says. “Thanks.”

Betty doesn’t wait for her after school anymore. And James catches on to the hint, so she doesn’t stick around on the bleachers during cheer practice, and she doesn’t go out of her way to see Betty in the halls anymore. 

They only see each other in the treehouse now. Betty is glad that James’s coming out went so well and she tells James to feel free to tell them whatever she wants, but she makes it clear that she doesn’t want to face them after they find out about her, so James doesn’t tell them. It would only make her feel bad.

James tries not to mind that Betty pretty much ignores her now, any time that they do happen to see each other in public. She understands, she really does. And she still has her, in the treehouse and in texts that she knows Betty erases as soon as she’s read them, and that can be enough. It has to be enough. There’s no other option. But still, it hurts.

Betty has managed to convince Britney that they were whispering, either that, or she has told her something else to make sure Britney no longer suspects them. James doesn’t really want to know. She seems to feel a bit more confident that they’re not going to be outed to the whole town any time soon, and that’s all that matters in the end. But it isn’t long before Betty reveals that she has a plan. 

“You know Stephen, right?” she says, one evening at the end of May, after interrupting a series of kisses from James.

“Yeah, I know Stephen.” He’s one of the quieter guys on the football team. He’s the one that asked James why she cared so much that his friends were calling her friends ‘dykes’. How could she forget?

“He’s a nice guy.” 

“Is he?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So?”

“So… I’ve been thinking… if I start hanging out with him more…”

James suddenly realizes where this is going and shakes her head. “No.”

“No, hear me out,” Betty says. “I won’t actually date him. We’ll just spend more time together, just in school. We’re friends anyway, so it’s not that weird. It’ll just seem a bit more…” She hesitates.

“Straight?”

“Don’t put it like that.” Betty reaches out for James’s hand. James pulls it back.

“It is like that.” 

“Okay, yeah,” she sighs. “It is. But think of it like this. If people think I am dating Stephen, they won’t think twice if they see us hang out together again.”

“I thought you said you had it under control. You haven’t even looked at me in school in a month. Isn’t that bad enough?”

“That’s what I’m trying to fix, James. I wanna be able to look at you again without my friends starting to talk.”

“Well, if that’s what it takes,” James snarls. She doesn’t even think through what she is passive aggressively agreeing with.

“Don’t be mad.”

James scoffs. She barely refrains from folding her arms over each other, but she doesn’t exactly soften her glare either.

“Do you wanna know what this is really about?” A smirk starts to form on Betty’s face. She touches the first body part that James can’t pull away in time, which happens to be her shin. She brushes her thumb over it softly, and James hates that it’s working. She can’t be mad when Betty is cute like this, and when her touch is putting a spell on her. “I know you said you weren’t going to prom next month.”

“I’m not,” James grunts. “I have anti-prom plans with Alice and the Sams.”

“Would I be able to change your mind if I said I really wanted to take you?”

“Are you kidding?” James honestly isn’t sure.

“No.” Betty is glancing through her lashes at her. “It’s a special night. I want to spend it with my special person, just like all the others.”

“Did Stephen turn you down?” It’s a low jab, but she had to make it.

“James… As I was saying. If people think that I’m dating Stephen, and you and I started being friendly in public again… It wouldn’t be so weird if we went to prom together. As friends, obviously.”

“As friends,” James repeats mockingly.

“It’s not perfect.”

“Far from.”

“I get it if you would rather spend the night with your friends. I know prom isn’t really your scene anyway. But it would mean a lot to me.”

James sighs. “If I say no, are you still going to pretend to date Stephen?”

“Not if you would hate me for it.”

“I would never hate you,” she grunts without the hint of a smile.

“That’s why I’m really hoping you will say yes.”

James notices how she managed to swerve around answering her question. But her answer doesn’t matter anyway. Of course James is going to say yes. She will always say yes to Betty, and if she hasn’t realized that by now, James might just have to try a little harder to let her know. If Betty wants James to go to prom with her, she will have James at prom with her. James will even wear whatever stupid dress Betty picks out for her, she could even get her to wear makeup if she asked nicely. James doesn’t care. If there is a choice, the right one is always Betty.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll come to stupid prom.”

Betty squeals and leaps up to kiss her. James sighs, but she can’t help smiling into her lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry


	6. lost in the lights

I should have known that I couldn’t have it both ways. Junior prom wasn’t the last time I made that mistake. I either had to take you proudly on my arm, or I should have left it alone. You didn’t want to come. I knew that. Even as we were picking out a dress for you, and as I was teaching you how to do your makeup. At the time, I thought maybe it was the shoes that were the last straw for you. They weren’t that high, we compromised on an inch and a half, and you could still walk in them. But they weren’t you. They were the version of you that I could bear to show off to the world that night, and that was wrong of me. Looking back, I don’t even understand why you let me do all of that.

I had told you I’d fixed Britney’s accusations with simple denial, but that wasn’t the whole truth. I still feel horrible when I think about the things I told her that morning, and every time she brought it up for a long time after that. See, Britney didn’t let it go that easily. And she wasn’t exactly a gay ally.

She said she had known about you from the moment you had stood up for Sam at my party. She called you the D word again. I told her not to say that. In fact, I told her you weren’t gay at all. And neither was I. I acted completely outraged that she would dare think of us that way. I pretended to be disgusted. I verbally fought her in my defence, not because she was homophobic, but because I was trying to save my own ass, like I didn’t even care about her bigotry. 

It was ugly. I’m not proud of that. And it didn’t even work. I may have overcompensated a little, because Britney still shot you disgusted looks when you passed by us in the hall, and she raised her eyebrows suggestively if I so much as glanced in your direction. And I knew she had already talked to the others. The only thing that saved me was that they just couldn’t believe her on her word. They just couldn’t imagine a girl like me, like them, being like us. They were giving me the benefit of the doubt. But it felt like that doubt had an expiration date. It wasn’t enough to not give them proof that I was gay. I had to come with strong evidence against it.

Out of all the boys I had available, I really did like Stephen best. He was nice, tall, really good at football, and all the other girls thought he was very cute. I liked hanging out with him. He wasn’t as funny as you, and he would never understand me the way you did, but that wasn’t the point back then. I just needed him to straighten out my image. Literally.

I asked you how you felt about my plan after I had made up my mind about it. I had already begun getting closer to him. I messed around with him in the halls, I cheered a little harder for him than I did for the rest of the team. I mirrored the behavior of my friends around their crushes, and I don’t think I was even that subtle about it. I don’t know how you didn’t notice it, but I was glad you didn’t. I never lied to you beyond that, I swear. 

I really did want to go to prom with you. But I don’t know if I can honestly say that was the only reason I started “dating” Stephen. The dates themselves were fine. We got along like we always did, except now it was just the two of us, and he was paying for my milkshakes and fries. It wasn’t exceptional, I’ll admit that, but I liked the way he made my friends talk to me like they always talked to each other. I liked finally being part of their conversations. I liked not feeling like an outcast, like I was hiding something. 

Of course I would rather have talked to them about you. And throughout that month, most of the time I did. I just used his name in stories about you that made me smile. You should have seen their reactions. They were practically drooling over how romantic and sweet you could be. They were actually jealous of what a gentleman I had obtained.

But despite the intentions behind my plan, I barely saw you at all that month. We went shopping together, and you came to my house twice while my mom was home. We didn’t kiss, and we didn’t meet at the treehouse once. I don’t remember even minding it. I was too giddy to be going to prom with you. Summer was coming up, and once all my friends were out of town I figured I would have you to myself again. I didn’t mind laying low for a little while before that.

I should have considered how that made you feel. Your texts were getting shorter. You didn’t smile as much anymore when we were together. You didn’t joke as much as before. You mentioned Stephen a lot, mumbling dark remarks about my present and future with him, and I just brushed it off, thinking I would get the chance to make it up to you someday. 

Prom night, we agreed to meet each other there; another part of my elaborate, selfish plan to make us look less like a couple and more like two people who just happened to be friends attending the same prom. The only consolation I offered you was that I didn’t go with Stephen either, despite his asking me many times. I went with Inez and Britney. 

The whole night I looked around that gym for you. We had agreed to meet by the snack table, but I couldn’t stand around there all night, knowing you would show up fashionably late. I tried, but my friends kept taking me back to the dance floor. Stephen was always right behind to entertain me with a dance or a joke. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t just ignore him, or tell him off. I reciprocated his dances and jokes, and tried to seem focused on him.

When  _ My Best Friend _ played, Stephen insisted on a slow dance, but obviously I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I scanned every face in the crowd, by the snack table and everywhere else. But you were nowhere to be found. You’d promised me you would be there. We’d set up this whole plan so we could be there together. And when that song played, it was like a cruel joke from the universe, punishing me for being there with him and those fake friends, instead of you, my best friend and more than a lover. I was ready to cry by the time the song was over. And I did later, after I got home, and you hadn’t so much as texted me to let me know why you’d skipped out on my, or where you had gone instead.

I couldn’t understand why you would do it. For a while that night, I thought something horrible must have happened to you. I thought you’d gotten in an accident or something. There couldn’t be another reason you would have let me down like that. But then the next day, you texted me a single  _ im fine  _ in response to my dozens of texts and calls, and that was it.

You ignored me at school that monday. It was the last week of school before summer began, and you didn’t so much as glance my way. I went to the treehouse every moment of my free time, waiting for you, but you never showed. By Wednesday, I gave up whatever weird pride I had about coming to your house, and your brother let me in the door.

You didn’t tell me to leave when I came into your room. You just sat on your bed, with your back to me, and I asked you what was wrong. You said nothing was wrong. I asked you why you hadn’t shown up to prom. You said you had had a change of plans. I didn’t understand. You had promised me you’d be there. We had gotten you a dress, shoes that you would never wear again, and everything. I asked why you couldn’t have just told me you weren’t coming. I’d spent the whole night looking for you, and you weren’t there. 

You made another one of your comments about Stephen. You said I should just be with him instead. I didn’t understand why you were being so hostile. I got the sense that you were trying to get rid of me. And I understood that you thought I had already replaced you, with my friends and my fake boyfriend, but I hadn’t, and I was so sure you knew that. So I offered you my summer, like I had a hundred times before. I held that summer out to you as a promise, and I never thought for a second that you would simply decline.

You said you were going away for the summer, the whole summer, like it meant nothing to us. You said you needed some time away.

I was scared so scared that I had lost you. That even if I hadn’t yet, that summer would be the end of us. I was so scared, I could have gotten on my knees and begged for you to stay. But I was too mad at you right then, that you had stood me up and were acting like this. I was mad enough that I could have told you to fuck off for the summer for all I cared. 

When I went home and cooled down a bit, I convinced myself that whatever it was I had done to push you away would be okay again. I was sure you would send me a text from Rhode Island, that you were coming back sooner than expected and wanted to meet me at the treehouse again. I made myself believe that whatever we had broken in your room that day could still be fixed.

But I spent the whole summer alone. The only one I had to keep me company, ironically enough, was Stephen. I would hang out with him whenever I was bored, have dinner at his house with his family, go to the movies and swim in the lake with him. And I don’t think that it matters at this point, but I hope you knew that I never let it cross the line between platonic and romantic, or even just sexual, not until you came back. While you were away, and I was hurt, confused, and lonely, he was my friend. I know now that he had had feelings for me since long before even prom, but I was too naive to realize it back then. Maybe that was stupid of me. Maybe if I had realized it sooner, I would have seen what you were so mad about. And in the end, I only proved you right.

But not before you truly broke my heart.

You shattered it in a million pieces, James. 

It was the week before school began, and I had to hear from Inez that you were back in town. My ears perked up at that. We were lying by the side of her pool, and I hadn’t been paying attention to her and Britney’s conversation at all, until they started talking about you. I almost got out my phone to text you immediately, until I realized that I wasn’t quite sure if I was entitled to your time again. If it was any hint, you hadn’t let me know you were back in town yourself. And then Inez got to the point that had her talking about you in the first place.

“Your funny little friend spent the whole summer on a lesbian getaway at her lover’s beach house, apparently.”

It was like a blunt knife plunged into my heart, the memory of our last conversation giving it an extra twist. And as I lay bleeding out on the lounger in Inez’s garden, her and Britney took turns pushing it in further and further with every word.

“No way! With who?”

“That weird band girl that always hangs out with her and those other dykes. You know the one with the red hair.”

“Abby or something?”

“Alice,” I gurgled through the blood pooling in my mouth.

“Yeah, her.”

“I knew James was a dyke! I knew it, didn’t I, Betty?”

I got up from the lounger at once, and took my bleeding, shaking body to the bathroom, where I threw up and sat on the floor for as long as they would let me, knocking and yelling at me to at least unlock the door. I went home, saying I wasn’t feeling well, obviously.

I never cried so much in my life as I did that last week of summer before senior year.

I never understood heartbreak until you gave it to me, handed on a silver platter. It was you and me, you had promised me that. We had always promised each other that. We were supposed to make it through the last year of high school and then skip town together. That was the plan. We had New York waiting for us. We had a brighter future together, and we were going to fight to make it there one day. 

That was when I realized that you had been right, that day in the treehouse. You were all I had, and nothing else truly mattered. All I needed was you to hold me through it all. And I had tried so hard not to let anyone take that away from me, but you couldn’t hold me through this.

You had robbed me of it, just like that. You threw it all away, everything we had promised each other, everything we had built up together. The love, the trust, the dream. You just gave up on it, and I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t know what it was that had done it in the end, what had been the final straw. I figured it must have had something to do with my refusal to come out of the closet, with Stephen, with my friends, but I thought you had understood all of that. You were the one that had assured me time and time again that it was okay, that what we had was enough, that it was all going to work out someday. 

But maybe it simply hadn’t been enough after all. Maybe Alice had more to give you than I did. Maybe her parents liked you better. I would have assumed so, since they invited you over to their summer house anyway. Maybe she wasn’t ashamed to look at you when her friends were around. Maybe she didn’t hide you away like a dirty little secret. Maybe she was just better for you than me. Or maybe she was a better person in general. 

I grew harshly aware that I hadn’t been the easiest girl to love. I made it hard for you. I had stopped you from coming out when you wanted to. I had gotten my father angry with you, and I know he scared the shit out of you. I was sad and I was scared all the time, and you just had to deal with that. And you always did. Maybe it had just become too much for you. You were giving me everything you had, and I couldn’t even bring it up to come see a movie with you anymore.

I went through the whole rollercoaster of hating myself and forgiving you, and then turning back to hating you and feeling sorry for myself, over and over again in that first week, and it just went on and on when school started again. 

The first day I found out you were in my homeroom again, I left the room and switched it, along with every other class we were supposed to have together that year. I avoided you as much as I could. I straight up ignored you when I did run into you. I didn’t even grant you enough attention to see if you cared at all. 

You were the talk of the school, those first weeks. Alice was off to college, so they didn’t care much for her. But you were the first person to come out in our school, and even though it wasn’t your own doing, you didn’t seem to mind it much. You took a shove against the lockers every now and then, but that was about it, as far as I could tell from my considerable distance. 

A month into the school year, you texted me four times in one evening. You wanted to talk. You needed to talk. You could explain yourself, and you would, if only I would come meet you at the treehouse. I deleted the texts and I blocked your number. I was fully planning on never speaking to you again.

One time shortly after that, I saw you pass by my house on your skateboard, and something inside me told me to run out the front door, stop you in your tracks. I didn’t know what it was I would do next. I imagined I would either punch you or kiss you. Either way, I couldn’t even move my feet before you were out of sight. Then I just cried, as I was used to doing by then.

Stephen kissed me the day before Halloween, after I asked him what was taking him so goddamn long. It happened at school, after his football practice. It wasn’t very romantic, or maybe it would have been if I had felt the same way he did. But I was starting to find his affection endearing. It wasn’t the same as what you had given me, but it was better than nothing. And it was certainly better than the hole you had left in my heart when you left me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps in exchange for a comment I might consider setting this right ^_^


	7. lead me to the garden

James sits in the treehouse, throwing around a dirty old tennis ball some dog must have forgot to bring home from his walk. She lets it bounce from wall to wall, enjoying the shuddering and creaking of the wood on impact. It’s too cold to be up here. It’s new year’s day, and there’s snow on the ground below. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. 

A year ago she sat here with Betty on this day, dreaming about what the new year was gonna bring them. Neither of them would ever have predicted what ended up happening. And now it was too late to turn any of it back.

James is thinking over a lot of things. Things she should have done differently, things she should have said. Like how she could have told Betty in all honesty that she didn’t want her to date Stephen, if it wasn’t real. She shouldn’t have just assumed that Betty would know how she felt about it, because clearly she didn’t.

How she should have stayed at prom, even after she saw Betty dance and laugh with Stephen. She should have realized that that wasn’t the same as what they had. She knew that, and Betty knew it too. She shouldn’t have been so quick to judge. And even after Stephen spotted her watching them dance, she should have stayed. The glare he shot her over Betty’s shoulder should have made her more angry than scared. She should have gone up to them and claimed her dance with Betty. She didn’t request their song with the DJ for nothing. That was supposed to be her cue. She knew Betty would have dropped everything to dance with her, even for just that one song. She should have cared less about what Stephen would think. She shouldn’t have been so convinced that he would see how they both felt, and that he would do something when he did. What would it even have mattered? If Stephen had wanted to punch her in the face, she should have just let him. It would have been worth it. 

Or at least, if that was all too much to handle, she should have just told Betty the truth when she asked about it the next week. That she was there, at prom. That she didn’t stand her up. She would never stand her up, and if Betty knew anything about her at all, she would have realized that. But still, she could have told her. And she could have told her what happened after.

She should never have gotten in the car with Alice after storming out of the gym. Or at least she could have asked her to take her home, or to the Sams like they had originally planned weeks before. She shouldn’t have let Alice kiss her when they pulled over at the lookout. She should have at least put a stop to it when it went slightly farther than just kissing. Being upset with Betty was no excuse. It was wrong.

She shouldn’t have told Alice she would come with her to Rhode Island. It was an offer hard to refuse, hence her parents urging her to make the trip, when would she ever get another chance like that? She hadn’t seen the ocean in years. But she knew what was going to happen between Alice and her. She knew how Alice felt about her. But she also knew that Alice would be going to college after the summer, and that it would be over after that anyway. But what was that for an excuse?

She shouldn’t have decided that for doing wrong by Betty, she needed to take herself out of Betty’s struggle with her sexuality without even telling her why. How could she be so angry, with Betty, with Stephen, with Britney, but most of all with herself, that she felt the need to destroy it all, just like that? She remembers the conversation vividly, because it haunted her that whole summer, and after that it was kind of hard to lose. She relives it whenever she feels angry or sad again, which is most of the time. At night when she’s alone in bed, in homeroom when she stares at the empty seat among Betty’s friends, and when she’s up here in the treehouse, just to feel it some more.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Betty had asked, after she had forced her way into James’s bedroom.

“Nothing,” James had grumbled, unable to look Betty in the eyes.

“Where the hell were you last Friday?”

“I changed my mind. I told you I had other plans.” She’d been so cold. She curses at herself now, for being so cold to Betty. How could she do that? She’d never done that before. Did she really think Betty deserved that?

“And you couldn’t have bothered to tell me that? You promised you’d be there, James. I spent the whole damn night looking for you.”

“No you didn’t.” 

“What?”

“Nothing.” If she’d said it again a little louder, so Betty would have heard it right. Then she would have known that James was there, and she would have asked why she’d left before she saw her. Then she would have had to explain. They would have had to talk about it, about the song, about Stephen. It might have made things a little better.

“What?” She had insisted. Come on. James could have easily repeated herself, spoken what was on her mind. Even owning up to the whole thing with Alice would have been better than letting the guilt wash over her completely. It made her say what she said next, and now she couldn’t take any of it back.

“You don’t need me anymore, Betty. That’s fine, honestly. Just go back to your boyfriend. He makes you a lot happier than I do.” Did she really think at that moment that she was helping Betty at all? Did she really believe that’s what she needed to hear? Did she even really believe that setting her free was the chivalrous thing to do? Did she think that was up to her to decide? That Betty wouldn’t be able to choose for herself after the heard the truth? Or did she just say it out of pettiness? She tries to remember now, but it doesn’t matter either way. In the end, Betty’s choice was obvious. 

“He doesn’t, James. You know that.” 

“No, he does. You should just be with him for real. I’ll step out of your way.” She can’t even imagine saying that now, not without her heart breaking all over again. Not now that she’s seen what it looks like, Betty and Stephen, Stephen and Betty, king and queen of the school halls. She hates herself for ever suggesting it.

“You’re not in my way. You  _ are  _ my way.” Funny, looking back, that that was about the most romantic thing Betty ever said to her, and James didn’t even care in that moment. Every time she thinks about it now, it makes her heart pound and her eyes tear up. That line should have made all the anger float away. That’s where she should have turned around and begged on her knees for forgiveness.

“What has gotten into you?” Alice had. And for every time that joke pops inside James’s mind when she gets to this part of the conversation’s replay, it has never made her laugh even a little.

“Nothing.”

“What are you saying, James? Are you breaking up with me?” Betty’s voice shook as she carefully asked it, still standing there like a ghost by the door of James’s bedroom, as if she was scared to move. James could see her in the mirror on her desk, but Betty didn’t seem to realize that. 

“Was there ever anything to break up?” For God’s sake, yes there was. Why did she have to be so cruel? Betty’s lip quivered. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe James only imagines hearing Betty’s heart shatter on the floor at this point, because in that moment, she didn’t seem to realize that was what was happening at all. Maybe she’s just remembering it the way she wants to, for dramatic effect, or for hope’s sake. Either way, the outcome of the conversation was all the same.

“When school is out, we’ll have the whole summer together. Just you and me, just like before. We’ll figure it out, right? Just a couple more days.” James could have gone a couple more days. She could have gone a couple more years. She could have spent a lifetime or twenty waiting for the day things would go back to normal with Betty. If only Alice hadn’t kissed her, and she hadn’t kissed her back, and it hadn’t felt so nice, and she wasn’t so mad at Betty that she didn’t want it to stop. If only then, James wouldn’t have felt the need to say any of these stupid things, and she would still be with Betty today, in whatever way, shape or form.

“We won’t. I’m leaving for the summer.” She hadn’t even made up her mind yet. She only said it to hurt Betty, and it worked.

“What? Why?” Yeah, why?

“I need some space.” Did she? Why couldn’t she see she just needed Betty?

“From what?” And why did she have to be so goddamn cold?

“Alice and I are taking the train to her parents’ beach house next week. We won’t be back until school starts again.”

“Seriously? The whole summer?”

“You have Stephen and all your friends.” She’d spat the last part at the floor. Stephen, who was so tall, so funny, so… male. So straight. She remembers the frustration she felt, because she still feels it every time she sees him. The friends, who use slurs and always look down on James no matter what she does. Honestly, looking back now, that’s the one part she wouldn’t take back from that conversation. In fact, she wishes she had said more about them, and the way it didn’t sit right with her that Betty always chose them over her. She understood that they were a big part of her image, her reputation, her plan to get a cheer scholarship, but it still hurt. “I need some time with mine.”

“Alright, that’s great. I’ll entertain myself over here, I guess.”

“Yeah you will.” She wouldn’t. James knew she wouldn’t. Why had she been so cruel to her?

“Well, have a great summer then.” The way it plays in James’s head, Betty’s voice broke as she said that. James doesn’t remember this clearly, but every time she pictures the conversation again, Betty is crying at the end. 

“You too.”

All that she had needed to say instead was: “I’m sorry. I fucked up. I’ll stay and I’ll make it up to you. We will be okay.” But she didn’t say any of that. She just went to Rhode Island with Alice, and made sure that there was no way back.

James often wonders if it was worth it. Obviously not, now that she’s alone and miserable, but at the time, there was a reason she had gone with it. Alice wanted her, and she wasn’t afraid to show it. It was just easy to be with her. And besides, that night at prom, James wasn’t altogether sure that Betty didn’t have a similar thing going on with Stephen. And when she lied twisted in bedsheets with Alice under the open window by the sea, she couldn’t blame Betty if she were. Of course she wished she could have just been there with Betty, in that old beach town, walking hand in hand, covered in sand and kisses, not minding anybody staring at them at all. But the more time she spent with Alice, the more she realized that that was never going to happen for them. Not as long as they still lived in Wilson, Pennsylvania. Not as long as Betty was ashamed of who she was. It felt important to her then, to come to that conclusion. It felt like her and Betty were over, that she had to move on, and it even felt like she would be okay with that, eventually. 

But at the same time, it was when Alice told James that Betty didn’t deserve a girlfriend like her, that James deserved better than to be hidden away and silenced, that James felt the worst about leaving her behind. Alice didn’t understand where Betty was coming from. She didn’t know what it was like to live in an abusive household, to have your father skip out on you, to have nothing going for you but your cheer captain status and your big league friends. She didn’t know Betty like James did. She didn’t know her every secret, the meaning of every twitch in her facial expressions, how she liked to be held when she was upset or when she was scared. She didn’t see the unerasable history between them, every memory shared that would haunt them for better or for worse for the rest of their lives. She didn’t realize that James and Betty had shaped and molded each other into who they were today, and who they would eventually turn out to be. There was too much that Alice failed to understand, and thinking about all those things made James feel all the more horrible for leaving Betty behind.

After a few weeks, she'd simply change topics whenever Alice started about Betty again, or go for a walk along the beach on her own for an hour or two. Sometimes she would scream and cry, drown her anger and her guilt in the ocean, but she got back in bed with Alice every night, still wishing it was Betty lying next to her instead.

It kills James now, to think about what she did from where Betty stood. After everything she’d been through, everything she’d cried on James’s shoulder for over the past ten years, James can never forgive herself for last summer. For every time that Betty’s dad left without an explanation until he left to live with his new family forever, James met her here on the clearing by the creek and promised her not everyone was always going to leave her. She might not have used those exact words every time, but that was how she meant every hug, every touch of her hand, every kiss on Betty’s lips and her neck, anywhere she could reach her, and that’s how she always intended Betty to receive the message. There was nobody else in the world that had this non-verbal understanding of her. James can safely assume that, because she doesn’t have it with anyone else either. She doesn’t have it with her parents, or Sam, and she certainly never had it with Alice. It’s just Betty.

It’s always just been Betty. 

Before she knows it, she’s crying again. She only notices because the tears are so much warmer than the air in the treehouse, and once they lay on her cheeks for a while, they’re so cold that they start to hurt.

She wants Betty back. She needs Betty back. She doesn’t care if they have to hide in the treehouse for the rest of their lives. They’ll get a space heater installed, and Alex can come up to bring them food every now and then. They really only have to make it until the summer. Six more months, and they can leave this hellhole. Why shouldn’t they leave it together, like they always planned? What kind of cruel fate would it be, for them both to have to leave it alone after all this time? And if it’s all James’s own doing, why shouldn’t she be allowed to fix it?

Back at school the next week James is reminded of the harsh reality that she desperately tries to forget whenever she can. That Betty and Stephen are a real couple now, and every time James sees them together, she feels it sting in her heart, in her midriff, in her back and her lungs. It hurts everywhere. 

And the worst part isn’t even that he actually makes Betty happy. It’s that he doesn’t, and he doesn’t even notice it. Betty is still sad, something dark still crosses her eyes everytime James catches them, and it still hurts. What was between them all those years, it’s still there. It’s been burnt and frayed, but it still exists, it’s always there, dying over and over again. It lies writhing in agony on the floor between them, begging them for mercy. 

James expected at some point Betty would put it out of its misery and cut it loose altogether. But it’s been five months, and that still hasn’t happened. Now it’s up to James to try to resuscitate it.

She’s thinking about how to go about this for the millionth time when a group of football guys pass by her locker. She doesn’t have much time to brace herself before they shove her roughly against it and call her a new homophobic word they came up with over Christmas break. Her shoulder hits the edge of the open door. She hisses and puts her hand over it. When she looks up, she sees Betty and Stephen coming down the hall. 

Stephen isn’t laughing like the other guys are still, echoing down the hall like hyenas, pulling more attention to what just happened. He just shakes his head at his friends as if they made some dumb harmless joke, and avoids James’s eyes.

James looks at Betty until she’s forced to look back. 

“I’m sorry,” she mouths, almost audibly, as she passes by James. James stares after her in disbelief. That’s the first time she’s acknowledged her existence since August.

From the other side of the hall, Britney is watching her staring at Betty, and makes a V over her lips with her fingers. She wiggles her tongue in between and winks. James frowns in disgust, and flips her middle finger at Britney.

“You wish!” she shouts across the hall.

James rolls her eyes and scatters off to Spanish class.

The first step of James’s planning phase involves asking Sam for advice. Misery loves company as they say, and she can use her fellow sapphic’s wisdom on the matter. Sam knows everything about James and Betty now anyway. About James and Alice too. Just like James knows everything about Sam and other Sam, ever since they started real-talking after summer ended. 

“I don’t know, man,” Sam says at first. “Sam and I don’t fight. We don’t see the point.”

“We’re not fighting,” James says. “We never have. We just had a misunderstanding, I fucked up, and now I want her back.”

“But she has a boyfriend.”

“She doesn’t love him.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she’s gay.”

“Could be bi.”

James thinks for a second. “I don’t think so. But still. I just know.”

“Okay, if you’re that confident about your bedside manner.”

“That’s not what it’s about.” 

Sam laughs. “Yeah right.”

“It’s not.”

“Alright, Romeo. You do realize I’m the last person to ask about shit like this?”

“No you’re not. You and Sam have been together for ages. You know how to make it work.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never fucked someone else behind her back.” 

James sighs. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked.

“Look, James, just apologize. Be honest. Do that thing where you cry like a baby and say your life is worthless without her. What’s the worst that can happen? You’ve already lost her. If she forgives you, hurrah! If she doesn’t, that’s that. Bless us all, you can finally move on.”

You can say what you want about Sam, but at least she’s honest. 

Once James realizes that she’s right, her first order of business is trying to shake the fear that she might indeed not forgive her. It’s easy for Sam to say she can just move on, but James can’t do that. What her and Betty had was messy, it was scary, and it was hard sometimes. But it was also rare, and James is all too aware of that now. She’s not going to find this again. Ever. She doesn’t want to think about what happens if Betty turns her down once and for all. She’s scared of what it would do to her.

Once she gets past this, she will have to find the right strategy to go about it. The right place and time. She can’t do it at school, because as much as she likes the idea of a big gesture, she isn’t going to out Betty against her will without a warning. That’s out of the question. 

She can’t call or text her, because Betty blocked her number, and she has tried calling from Sam’s phone a bunch of times, but she never answered. 

She can’t just come to her house unannounced, because that is rude. What if her mom answers the door, or Betty does and she just slams the door in her face? It doesn’t seem like the right thing to do to make someone less mad at you. 

She could always write a letter, but she doesn’t have faith that Betty wouldn’t tear it up immediately. She needs to say what she has to say where Betty has to hear it.

Come February, there is chatter about the halls about Betty’s upcoming birthday party. The previous one was well remembered due to the presence of other Sam’s pot, and because football star Stephen makes a far more exciting secondary host than James, it seems like this party is gonna be slightly bigger than the last one.

Parties aren’t really James’s scene, as history has proven, but the occasion does lend itself to people walking in and out of Betty’s house unnoticed. Betty won’t want to make a scene if James just happened to show up uninvited, since she won’t be the only one to do so. Betty might be a little drunk, and therefore a bit more willing to talk and hopefully listen. The music will be loud enough that no one can overhear them if they do end up talking. It’d be a big gesture, with the opportunity of privacy at whatever level Betty would prefer. 

The last thing James has left to figure out, is what to say to her when she finally gets the chance. She will say that she’s sorry, that she would take it all back if she could, that none of it was worth it. That she would give anything to just go back to the way it was. She’ll say that she’ll wait, however long Betty needs to forgive her, even if it takes forever. She’ll do whatever it takes to make Betty smile again, and if Betty gives her a chance, she’ll keep making it up to her for the rest of her life. 

She runs it by Sam the week before the party. Sam purses her lips and nods, then shrugs. She isn’t one for genuine feelings and romance, so James takes that as the highest acclaim she can get. 

She spends the rest of the remaining time thinking about what’s going to happen when everything is said and done. She finds it hard to imagine what Betty’s reaction is going to be, no matter how far along she gets into her speech.

In the worst case scenario, she will just tell her to fuck off, and though James hasn’t fully come around to accepting possible defeat yet, she has become more accustomed to the idea that it might happen, and she’s fairly confident that she will be able to walk away with her dignity intact. 

In the best case scenario, which James doesn’t allow herself to think about very much, Betty will hear her out completely, and forgive her on the spot. Sometimes she even goes as far as to fantasize about Betty kissing her again, right there in front of everyone at the party. Their lips will seal like they’ve found their home again, and they will float up from the ground, spinning around in the glow of the sparks flying from their eyes like tears of joy. That one goes a little far, and James tucks it away into the depths of her mind, knowing fully well that that is exactly what it would feel like if Betty kissed her again, even if it won’t look like it.

When the day finally rolls around, she’s too nervous to do anything at all. She’s useless at school, and she feels like she has to throw up the whole afternoon. She calls Sam for support after dinner, but she doesn’t help much to calm her down while she talks her through picking her outfit. She ends up going for the same exact button down and jeans she wore on their first real date, because it will hopefully remind Betty of that magical night. 

She sprays on some of her dad’s cologne in the bathroom, before she gives herself one more pep talk in the mirror.

“Go get your girl back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will she have her, will she want her????


	8. a flashback in a film reel

When you showed up at my party I didn’t know how to act. And neither did you, because you stood on the porch for a long time. The door was open, there was no need to ring the bell or wait outside. But you didn’t feel welcome there. In all fairness, you weren’t invited. 

I saw you arrive, but I didn’t come to the door immediately. If you didn’t have the guts to face me, I saw no reason to engage with you at all. I was still petty like that. Eventually a group of my friends came to inform me you had refused to get off the porch after they had probably not so kindly requested you to leave. It was the look on Britney’s face when she overheard them from the corner of the living room, the hunger for drama in her smug eyes, that got me to surrender.

I brought you a cup of schnapps and soda. I reckoned you would be thirsty from all the nerves, and that maybe the alcohol would help you calm them a bit. You said thanks, and gulped a large proportion of it down at once. Then I took you to the far corner of the porch, where no one could see us from the windows, and no one could hear us over the music inside. I took you by the hand without thinking about it, and you flinched. 

When we leaned back against the railing, you clung onto my hand like a lifeline. And then you started to cry. 

“I miss you,” you said. And that was all you could utter before you broke out in sobs. You set aside your cup in order to wipe your eyes, or hide your face. Either way, your shoulders heaved and you wailed for a good five minutes, and I hadn’t said a word since I came outside. In fact, I hadn’t said a word to you since our last conversation in your bedroom before that summer. I remembered the feeling I had that day, the anger and confusion I felt then and every day after for months. It was subdued by then, buried under school, college applications, Stephen, and cheer, but it was always there when I saw you, or even just thought of you. Yet it was all gone when you squeezed my hand and let your sorrow flood my porch.

Eventually, you took a deep breath, and you looked up at me with your big, sodden eyes. “I am so sorry.”

That’s what got me going too. The tears came faster than I could help to stop them. “You really hurt me.”

“I know.” You squeezed my hand even tighter. “Betty, I will do anything. If it’s not too late, please. I’ve been miserable all year. It’s like I can’t breathe without you.”

“James…” I was going to tell you I couldn’t possibly take you back. That I had a boyfriend, and I was happy with him, that what you had done was too bad, too unforgivable. I had pictured this conversation in my head a million times, and I had prepared myself to say all these things, to stand up for myself and turn you away again. But I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t true.

“Why did you do it?” is what I said instead. That’s the only thing I wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” you said. “I thought that I was losing you. You were so scared of me, of us. Fuck, you still are. Then there was him, and you were so much more comfortable with him than I could ever make you. She was there when I was at my lowest. But that’s no excuse, I know that. I think I was pushing you away. And you don’t have to forgive me for that, because I know I never will. But it won’t happen again, Betty. Never.”

“You still love me? After all this time?”

You frowned at me like I was offending you. “I don’t think I can ever stop.”

You didn’t ask it back. I didn’t say it back. I was trying to hold on to some kind of dignity convention taught me to believe I should have. But you deserved to know in that moment that I did still love you, as much, if not more, than I did before. That I hadn’t been able to breathe in months either. That it would only take me a couple more minutes before I would cave and have you back in whatever way you would offer.

“We can still leave together,” you said. You pleaded. You took my other hand and I could have sworn you were about to get down on your knees. “I’ll wait until graduation if I have to. We can just get in my car and never look back. We can still be everything we were planning to be one day. Tell me you still want that. Tell me and I’ll wait. We’ll go, and I’ll never let you down again.” 

I looked down at our intertwined hands. I noticed you were wearing the shirt you wore the night you gave me the necklace I was wearing. Your eyes fell on it the exact moment I realized.

I should have just said yes. Wait for me. Or have me now. I don’t care. Let’s run away. I was gonna work towards it, after I said my piece.

“You were my best friend, James,” I said.

“I want to be your best friend again.”

“I’m sorry I blocked your number. That was a step too far.”

“I get it,” you said, biting your cheek.

“I can’t move on like nothing happened.”

“I don’t need you to. I just want to talk again.”

“Me too,” I sighed. 

You wrapped your arms around my waist like you used to. My head went so light that it felt like gravity shifted so it was all I could do to lean against you. I pulled your head into my shoulder, and I felt our bones melting together again. I couldn’t believe we had robbed ourselves of this for so long. 

I pulled back for a second, thinking I heard the door opening, but whoever did it didn’t come outside, and the door fell back into the lock. You looked up too, loosening your grip on my waist. Then we looked at each other, our faces barely an inch apart.

My lungs took a break. Your breath quivered too, and your eyes went dark. The tip of your nose grazed against my lips for a moment. I really thought you were going to do it. I would have done it myself, if it wasn’t for Stephen. But if you had given me one final push, just a stroke of your thumb or a nudge of your chin, I would have given in. 

I know that kiss would have been it. Everything in our lives had led up to that moment. It was going to be that levitating kiss that would change our lives all over again. The moment our lips would have touched, we would have dropped everything to feel that way forever. 

You scoffed when you felt it was going to happen. I could feel the relief spilling through your lips when you knew I wasn’t going to pull away. You started to shift to the tip of your toes. And your lips were almost there when the door flew open.

“Here she is!” a drunk voice called over the porch.

We jumped apart faster than lightning.

“What are you doing out here, Betty?” Stephen asked.

“Woah, were you guys about to make out?” Justin said.

“Don’t stop on our account,” another boy said.

“Wait, what?” Stephen asked. He looked at you, frowning as he took you in, considered our positions and our crying faces. “Betty, what is she doing here?”

“We were just talking, Stephen.”

“You were trying to steal his girl,” Justin said, making his way towards you.

“No,” you said. He got to you before I realized what he was going to do. You knew, because you leaned back over the railing, trying to dodge him, but it was no use. He grabbed you by the collar of your shirt and shoved you into the wall.

“Justin!” I yelled.

“You better stay away from her, you sick fuck,” he hissed into your face.

“Hey, come on,” Stephen said. He got in between you two, and got Drew to back off. But Stephen towered over you, and he wasn’t looking very friendly either. 

“Were you trying to kiss her?”

“Stephen, no,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “We were just talking. Calm down.”

“She’s a lesbian, Betty,” he told me, as if that was brand new information. “She’s had her eye out for you from the start. Come on, you can’t be that naive.” I couldn’t believe he had known the whole time, and still been so blind when it came to me. He knew there was something between us, but he would never have guessed it was mutual. 

The other guys circled around you. From the door, more people came to see what the fuss was about. Britney and Inez pushed to the front row. 

You straightened out your collar and said, “This has been great, but I’m just gonna go.”

“No, James,” I started, but I don’t know what I was planning to say. I wasn’t going to ask you to stay. After Justin had shown that he had no trouble tossing you around like a ragdoll, it wasn’t safe for you to. They didn’t care that you were a girl. I knew right then that they would treat you the way they would any guy that threatened me or Stephen’s honor, if you challenged them any further.

“That’s right,” Justin said. “You best not show your face around her again.”

So you left. The girls by the door shrieked and jumped back dramatically when you passed them. Two boys had barricaded the bottom of the steps with their broad shoulders. You were angry or upset enough to push your way through roughly. They didn’t like that. They pushed you over in response.

“No!” I screamed. I hurried over to the steps. The guys were all laughing, the girls too. And you scrambled yourself upright in the grass, and locked eyes with me. Your eyes were begging me to do something, anything. Tears welled up in them again, and your lips were shaking.

Stephen’s hand fell on my shoulder with the weight of an anvil.

All I had to do was get down those steps. All I had to do was reach out for your hand and pull you back up to your feet. All I had to do was be on your side, and show you that I didn’t give a fuck what they thought. 

But I did give a fuck. I can’t understand now why I cared so much, that when I saw you powerless on the front lawn, I still didn’t have it in me to stand up for you. After everything you had done for me, the way you loved me, all the times you patched up my wounds and kissed them better, all the shame and fear I stowed upon you and you just took it from me without hesitation, and blew it away with the wind. After all of that, and I couldn’t even help you up from the ground.

A lot has happened in my life since then, and still, there is nothing I regret more than leaving you there at the bottom of the steps of my front porch. Watching the light in your eyes go out when you realized I wasn’t coming down to pick you up. Your jaw clenching as you crawled up on your own strength. You put your dignity first, even with tears in your eyes, heaved up your chin to your audience, but you and I were the only ones there. No one else saw that my eyes were begging you to stay. No one else heard every blade of grass bend under the soles of your sneakers as you stepped back. No one saw our tears turning the lawn into a lake, dragging us both under the surface. No one remembered every second of every moment we ever spent together since we were seven years old, all in that fraction of a minute that it took you to get up and get off of the lawn. No one but us. 

And even then, when you finally tore your eyes away from mine and turned around, I should have followed you. I should have screamed for you, I should have burst away from Stephen, from all those people, and ran after you.

But I didn’t. I let you leave. 

I wondered after that night, if this evened out what you had done to me. But at the end of the day, I knew it didn’t compare. You had come back for me, in all your bravery and pride, you had poured your heart out to me, and I knew you meant every word of it. After all the times you burned yourself on my fire as you did your best to put it out, I finally wounded you beyond repair. 

It’s been a long six years since that night. And it only makes sense that we lost touch. I never expected you to come running back to me again. You were right not to.

But I never lost track of you. I watched you from a distance, as you traveled the world, cut off your hair and switched up your style, growing into yourself with every change in your life. When you moved to New York and got into your dream school, the internet made it easier and easier to stay updated on your life, your girlfriends, your graduation, your first job. Your smile and your confidence always stealing the light on your pictures. I followed it all. 

I don’t know if you did the same thing. I can’t blame you if you haven’t. I haven’t been that forthcoming on my social media pages anyway. At most, you know that I went to Penn State, that Stephen and I were off and on all throughout college, and that I eventually moved to New York without him.

Ever since, I’ve been imagining running into you during a coffee run, or on the subway. I imagined walking down my own street and finding out you lived on the same block. I even imagined forcing an ‘accidental’ meeting by your workplace, or at one of the bars I know you frequent. I only ever went as far as to go to one such bar, but by the time I had finally gathered up the courage to go inside, I found you weren’t there. I considered asking people if they had heard of you, but I didn’t want you to know I had been there.

I’ve lived here for over a year now, and come to realize a city of eight million really isn’t the same as Wilson County, Pennsylvania, and you won’t just stumble upon the person occupying your mind no matter how hard you try to manifest it.

I haven’t directly reached out all this time because I didn’t think I should. If we had happened to see each other, it would have been different, it would have been out of my control as much as yours. It felt wrong to try to send you a message where you couldn’t escape it. I’ve wanted to for quite some time, but I had no idea how to go about fixing this. I didn’t know what I would even say. 

But for all these years, there hasn’t been a single day I didn’t want to talk to you. And ever since I moved here and left all those people and that town in the past, it’s been pressing on me harder than ever. This need to tell you everything I should have told you then. I still don’t know if it’s right. I still don’t think you should have to forgive me. But James, at this point I don’t think that I can ignore it anymore. 

I have loved you for more than half of my life. I haven’t seen your face or heard your voice in real life for six years. And still, that feeling has never paused for a second, or even grown any bit quieter. It’s always been in my heart, and it never left. I can’t sit here alone for the rest of my life, pretending that that doesn’t mean anything. Not as long as there’s still anything I can do to try and get you back.

I fully understand if you don’t want to hear me out. I’m prepared for it. But I hope you understand that I have to try. Even if you don’t feel the same anymore, there was too much left unsaid between us. 

There’s a cafe on Waverly and Sixth that serves sweet tea like no place outside of Pennsylvania. I’m hoping you will meet me there on Wednesday, or whenever you’re free, I will make the time, I’ll be there. 

Please let me know if you’ll come. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't worry, i hate it here too
> 
> oh how the tables have turned, i guess right now is the last time you can dream about what happens when James sees her face again


	9. you got a friend in me

James fixes her tie in the mirror of her old bedroom. It's a proper bow tie, matching with her blue pinstripe suit. It's a bit much, she'll admit, but whenever an opportunity to go all out presents itself, she will grab it, even if it's an occasion she wasn't originally interested partaking in at all.

When the invitation had showed up in the mail, she had almost thrown it in the trash immediately upon opening it. But she left it on the counter instead, along with some bills and a postcard from a friend.

High school reunions were a concept stewed up by the devil himself, James swore by that sentiment. She had successfully overcome every insecurity, every bad memory, every bruise of every shove and every word thrown at her in those days. She could laugh about that time now, looking back, knowing how things turned out in the end. Those guys that harassed her and laughed at her, they were still in that town, married to the same girls they took to prom, working unsatisfactory jobs and drinking to forget about it all every friday night. They were probably looking forward to relive their glory days during this stupid reunion. That weekend was gonna be the most exciting thing about their year. James didn't like to think of herself as the type to be petty, but she allowed these thoughts to bring a smile to her face every now and then.

She's living in the city of her dreams, working towards her dream job, the title of producer approaching faster than her 30th birthday. She has a great apartment, not very big but just enough to be cozy rather than cramped. It's at the edge of Tribeca, near to everything she could possibly need. She has friends that have grown more like family to her. Sam and Sam live in Brooklyn and they meet regularly for dog dates and drinks. And most importantly, she has Betty to come home to every day, to fall asleep next to every night and wake up with every morning.

It took a while for them to fall into this routine, embrace the life they had dreamed of since they were kids. After six years of radio silence, James had to admit that she had become comfortable leaving Betty in the past like the rest of Wilson County. Betty had become part of her old life, the life before she grew into the person she was always meant to be. Since graduating high school, she had learned about the world and her place in it, she had made friends that saw that world the same way, she had dated girls that taught her the triumphs and tribulations of public and healthy relationships, though comfortable a bit less passionate than she craved. She had cut off her hair and grown confident in her lanky body as she found her style and let her masculine side roam free. 

She spent some time alone and reflected a lot on her and Betty's relationship. And after a while, she came to accept that it was always going to end the way it did on the front porch that night. And she became okay with believing that might have been for the best. 

But even after everything, part of her could never let go of the memories. There was too much even in her new life that reminded her of Betty's absence, all the dreams they had and the plans they made, most of which James had been accomplishing by herself. That absence was always part of the air whenever she was out with friends, celebrating another milestone in school or work. It filled up her lungs when she traveled back to Pennsylvania to see her parents. It blew the hairs on the back of her neck upright when she was having dinner alone, and even when she spent the night with other girls. 

Though she realized what her and Betty had wasn't ideal at the time, she never stopped thinking about what could have been if Betty had dropped everything that night of her party. If she had jumped down the steps and pulled James off the lawn, held onto her hand and walked away with her. If they had skipped town and built their new life in New York together, maybe James's heart wouldn't have felt so empty.

Still, when Betty reached out four years ago, James thought long and hard if she should go to that cafe. In the sense that no one could make James feel like Betty could, no one could hurt her the same either. She had focused a lot on not forgetting about that part while she was getting over her. All that time she had asked herself what she would say if Betty ever came back into her life, offering exactly what she ended up offering that day, James always decided upon a definite no. Betty was to remain in the past, no matter how hard she'd beg. Up until the moment James walked through the door of that cafe on Waverly and Sixth, she didn't think that she would. 

She didn't know what she had been expecting, but Betty looked as much the same as she looked like a whole new person, sitting there in the back corner of the cafe. She still had her long brown hair, and she wore it in a french braid over her shoulder, wearing a dress like she used to on most days, but a more mature one, one that said 'New York business' rather than 'summer at the creek'. But her face was harder, sharper around the edges. Still, she was as gorgeous as James had envisioned her all those years, if not more so.

That Wednesday in the cafe, James heard Betty out from start to finish as she pleaded to have James back in her life. And even if she had tried, James couldn't have resisted.

They started as friends, at first. They eased back into each other's lives, catching up on everything they had missed. Betty's English major had landed her a job at The Times, and she was bound to work her way up. She fell in with James's New York friends soon enough, despite some cultural differences making for a rough start. The Sams had been least welcoming, but after Betty proved she was willing to work for their respect and James's trust, they began to warm up to her too. 

It took about a year of casual friendship before James kissed her again, during a sunny afternoon walk on the Highline. It was a date from the start, even if Betty didn't know it. When James invited her along, she had every intention of doing what she did halfway down the line. She'd taken Betty's hand and led her to the side looking out over the Hudson, where she looked her in the eyes for a drawn out minute, just to build the anticipation on both ends. It worked. Betty sighed into it, and melted against James as their lips reunited. 

And so it all came together in the end. As soon as that door was opened, it couldn't be closed again. They held hands for the rest of the walk, the rest of the weekend, and every time they saw each other after that. They kissed whenever they had the chance, not just in their rooms or in the back of crowded bars, but on sidewalks and around their friends too. James tried to give Betty all the time she needed to get used to this kind of exposure, but she didn't seem to need much. Everything was different now. And Betty looked happier than ever.

They tried very hard not to be a cliche. They both had their own apartments in their respective parts of the city, roommates that they got along with, and barely enough of an income to support a better alternative. But at some point they spent too much time at each other's places to be convenient anymore. Betty's drawer in James's room turned into an entire closet overtime, and James forgot so many of her things at Betty's that she lost track of it all. It was more like they both had two houses than anything else. The next step was only logical. 

The Tribeca apartment came on their path by fate. One of Betty's coworker friends was transferred to LA, and was kind enough to put in a good word for them with the landlord. And as soon as Betty heard there were pets allowed, a nine year old ginger cat was adopted from the shelter and christened Willow upon homecoming. James wasn't opposed to this because Betty promised her a dog would come next. And after a couple of months, Tara the terrier mix was welcomed into the family.

When everything was exactly as they had envisioned it at sixteen, a sense of calm settled over them that neither of them had ever felt before. It was both strange and comforting to realize that it was enough. They still have ways to go in their careers, but at home, they are at peace. They are happy.

Betty found the invitation to the reunion after she got home from work and settled at the counter with a glass of cold rosé and Willow curled clumsily on her lap. She sat with it for a while, turning it over a couple of times to read it again, lost in that deep pensive state James knows better than to interrupt, except to give her her welcome home kiss on the cheek.

"Let's go," Betty said then, averting her eyes from the invitation in favor of James's face. 

"Are you serious?" James asked, not knowing whether to grin or frown. She settled on both.

"Yeah," Betty said. She snaked her arm around James's neck to hold her close. "It'll be fun."

"I'm very curious to hear about your definition of fun. Because I could think of about a million other things you and we could do that would be a whole lot more fun." She pulled on Betty's waist to spin her stool just enough to meet her face, bringing their lips closer as she spoke.

"Ooh," Betty laughed, and she closed the distance with a proper kiss. Willow jumped off her lap in annoyance as they went on with it. Eventually, Betty caught James's lip between her teeth, and when she let it go, she said, "Tell me all about those later." 

"I will," said James, as she picked up Betty's wine glass and took a big gulp. 

"Get your own," Betty protested as she grabbed the glass out of her hand.

James grinned, kissed her forehead, and let her go to get a beer from the fridge instead. Then she sat down across from her. "Do you really want to go? Those people reigned nothing but terror on us for years. Why would you wanna go back?"

Betty toyed with the stem of her glass as she answered. "To show them up. We're gonna be the hottest couple there."

James gave her a puzzled look. She still wasn't sure if Betty was serious about this. They had talked about their past of course, but never much in depth about the people who made it so hard for them, or the possibility of ever seeing them again. It wasn't necessarily something James was looking forward to, and up until then she thought surely Betty wasn't either.

"I would like to take you there, James," she said, reading the hesitation on her face. "It'd be like a re-do. Redemption for prom, and all the other times. We don't have to talk to anyone. I just wanna show you off a little, that's all."

"There's some perfectly fine people you can show me off to right here in town. You don't have to travel all the way to the hellmouth of Pennsylvania for that."

"We can make a trip out of it," Betty suggested. "I haven't seen my mom in ages. And we haven't seen your parents since Christmas. I miss them."

James sighed. 

"The Sams can come along," Betty went on.

"They would rather die. Plus, who would watch Willow and Tara while we were gone?"

"So that's a yes?" Betty grinned.

James said she needed to ponder over it for a night. And she did. 

She thought about Britney and Stephen, Justin and those other boys that had pushed her around the halls all of senior year. Well, until Alex got wind of what had happened at the party. He was home from college for a weekend one time in the spring, and when James had told him about what happened between her and Betty at the party, trusting he would handle it like a normal person, he had figured out where Justin lived and come through on the promise he made when James came out. Or at least tried. He looked like a mess when he got back home with two black eyes and a split lip. Their mom had been so angry with him. Their dad had just patted his shoulder. Justin didn't exactly look worse, but the fact that none of his friends could see the other guy worked in Alex's – and James's – favor. James still doesn't know if it was something Alex said that got them to back down in the end, but they pretty much left her alone after that, with only a couple weeks of high school left.

James considered her strength now, compared to then. Even if everybody isn't mature enough to leave each other be, she figured she could easily beat up a bunch of beer guts if she absolutely had to. But she realized she looks a lot more intimidating now than she did as a scrawny misfit teenager. She's confident they wouldn't even dare try anything with her now. And besides, with Betty on her arm, she can handle anything.

So she decided to humor Betty. And that's how she finds herself back in her childhood bedroom, putting on the suit she wore to her college graduation. 

Betty returns from the bathroom with her makeup sharper than ever. God, she looks gorgeous. James grins as she joins her in the mirror. Suddenly she understands what Betty came here to do. They look stunning together. No one can deny that.

Betty puts a hand on James's jaw and turns her face over for a kiss. James pulls away roughly.

"Is it kiss-proof?" she inquires about the lipstick.

"Of course it is," Betty rolls her eyes and demands her kiss back.

James's mom is ready with her camera when they come down the stairs. They snap a few vanity shots and then a few more funny and spontaneous pictures. James's dad offers them a ride so they can arrive in style and drink at the reunion, but they kindly decline. They have other plans regarding an early, private after party.

They arrive at the school gym two hours after the opening party of the reunion weekend has officially started, to make sure everyone is there when they walk in. 

The gym is filled with people in ill-fitting suits and dresses, talking and laughing with deep voices and swaying awkwardly to the late 00's music blasting from the speakers. It's decorated in space theme, which James vaguely recalls was the theme of their senior prom which she didn't attend. It takes a moment before the first of the attendees notice Betty and James. But when they do, word spreads fast, and soon enough all eyes are on them.

Their laughter dies away in favor of whispered remarks as Betty casually leads James to the snack table. In passing, James realizes most of them are wondering who she is. It takes some squinting and prodding their minds before they realize. By then, James is already at the chips bowl, testing out the guacamole. It's pretty good.

"Betty!" a high voice says from behind them. "We didn't think you'd show."

James turns with her hand on Betty's back to find Britney staring at them, flocked by Angelina and Inez. Though clearly not seventeen anymore, none of them have changed a bit. They still have the same haircuts and expressions on their faces as ten years ago. It's weird. 

"I was in town anyway," Betty lies. 

"Right… All the way from New York City, huh?" Angelina said, trying to keep some sort of excitement off her face.

"Yeah," Betty says. "It's pretty great. You should come up some time."

"We should," Britney agrees with a smile.

James worries for a second. She doesn't want these people over at her house. But then she looks at Betty, and realizes how ingenuine this whole exchange is. 

"Good to see you too, James," Inez starts. "You left town so fast after graduation, I thought we'd never hear from you again."

"That was the idea," James says with the same kind of smile each of them has on, so they all laugh.

"You look very…" 

James waits in anticipation for Britney's adjective of choice.

"Handsome," she decides on, with a grimace that implies she herself isn't even sure if it's an insult or a compliment.

"I know, right?" Betty says, as she slips her arms around James's neck. She kisses her on the cheek softly, and despite the lipstick quality, James's cheeks both go red. She grins like an idiot, even when Betty lets her go with one arm to face the ex-cheerleaders again, hanging onto James's shoulders with the other.

Inez doesn't know where to leave her eyes, Britney frowns uncomfortably, while Angelina looks a little touched. 

"Let's go get some drinks, James," Betty says then. They walk to the makeshift bar in the corner. 

"You were right," James says. "This is kind of fun."

Betty gets a beer and a glass of wine and hands James the beer. They clink them together.

"I told you."

"They all still look the same."

"It's like time stood still while we were away."

"Even the music is the same."

"Speaking of which…" 

Their eyes meet as the thought crosses between them. 

"We really need a do-over."

"I'll go request it," James says.

She takes her beer over to the dj booth, while Betty stays behind on the dance floor. She gets swallowed in the crowd soon enough, people asking her how and where she's been, trying to steal a dance from her. James never loses track of her. When she's done talking to the dj, she makes her way back through the crowd to Betty.

When she gets closer, she notices a guy is talking to her. She stops for a second, not sure if she should interrupt. Then she sees who it is. 

It's Stephen.

Right then, the opening chords of  _ My Best Friend  _ start playing. A sense of déjà vu washes over James. But she keeps walking, even when Stephen looks up from Betty and sees her come, his smile falling off his face.

"Stephen," James says, when she reaches them.

"James," Stephen says. Then he holds out his hand to her. James looks at it, a little confused. Then she looks at Betty, who is eyeing the hand as well, but gestures James with a smirk to accept it. So James does. Stephen's shake is firm, and he leans close to James's ear as it goes on.

"Congratulations," he says, without much celebration in his voice. "Looks like you won after all."

"I didn't win anything," James hisses back. "She came back to me all on her own."

Stephen huffs, finally lets go of her hand and then slaps her on the shoulder the way men do sometimes.

"It's good to see you well, Betty," he says, and then he leaves through the crowd. 

James stares him all the way off the dance floor, until Betty takes her hands and leads her eyes back to herself. And right when the chorus starts, James holds on to Betty's waist and begins to sway her through the room like there's nobody else there.

She sings the words to Betty with all the passion of Tim McGraw himself, just the way Betty likes. Betty buries her face in James's neck and James can feel her smile against her skin. 

More couples are dancing around them, including Britney and a bearded man that looks an awful lot like Justin. When she catches his eye, she realizes that's because he is, just a gruffier and somehow meaner looking version. He can't seem to take his gaze off of James and Betty the whole way through the dance, and James can't decide whether it's hate or arousal in his eyes. She decides she doesn't want to know. 

Before the song ends, Betty lifts her head up to meet James's eyes, and they rest their foreheads together. James swallows, wondering quietly how far the implications of this do-over go. But then Betty answers her by kissing her, right there, in the middle of the floor. 

And somehow, it feels like their first kiss all over again. The one in the clearing by the creek, where James was a prince and Betty was her princess. It's just as private, just as quiet, and just as magical. But this time, there is no promise of keeping it to themselves. This time, there is no hiding. 

This time, everything is going to be okay.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Its very important to me that yall know I almost changed the chapter title to "glowing in the dark" because this love is alive back from the dead
> 
> When you're young you just run  
> But you come back to what you need
> 
> Anyways that was it, i had a lot of fun and breakdowns writing this!! Thank you to my 5 loyal readers ily ❤
> 
> Pls leave comments i beg 🥺🤲🏼


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